Ebola Vaccine 100% Successful In Guinea Trial

An anonymous reader writes: Doctors and researchers have been testing a vaccine to protect against Ebola in the west African nation of Guinea. Trials involving 4,000 people have now shown a 100% success rate in preventing infection. "When Ebola flared up in a village, researchers vaccinated all the contacts of the sick person who were willing — the family, friends and neighbors — and their immediate contacts. Children, adolescents and pregnant women were excluded because of an absence of safety data for them. In practice about 50% of people in these clusters were vaccinated. To test how well the vaccine protected people, the cluster outbreaks were randomly assigned either to receive the vaccine immediately or three weeks after Ebola was confirmed. Among the 2,014 people vaccinated immediately, there were no cases of Ebola from 10 days after vaccination — allowing time for immunity to develop — according to the results published online in the Lancet medical journal (PDF). In the clusters with delayed vaccination, there were 16 cases out of 2,380."

Comments

Re:The Onion had it right

[quantaman]

So at the end of the day: if these populations wish to enter the first world, the first step to take is to assert their ownership of the land they occupy on the continent, decide on their own borders

Bad borders are bad, but trying to redraw borders? That can be much, much worse.

One of the big rules in Africa (and pretty much everywhere) is you don't change national borders because that introduces massive stakes and is a recipe for wars and rebellion since every group decides they want their own country comprising of every bit of land they think their group is entitled to.

or (like other countries in the first world), abandon tribal identity so they progress on to greater things like indoor plumbing and medical research.

That's the solution but I think it's far from simple. Look at the US, there are two parties sharing a white Christian base and the political system has been deadlocked and dysfunctional for half a decade.

What do you think would happen if half the country was Protestant and the other half Muslim, or New Jersey was 50+% Italian descent, Michigan 50+% Nigerian, Texas 50+% Mexican, etc. Getting people to cooperate in a political system is not simple.