Development of a hand-held device to detect the Ebola virus in bodily fluids and a training package to teach health workers fighting the virus in West Africa to be more culturally sensitive are among five new Ebola research projects announced by the UK government and the Wellcome Trust on 16 November 2014.
The work is being funded with £1.34m from a joint Wellcome Trust and Department for International Development fund set up earlier this year to pay for and fast-track research in response to humanitarian crises.
The other three projects to receive money from the Research for Health in Humanitarian Crises initiative are a study into whether human behaviour can influence Ebola infection prevention and control, research into using statistical modelling to predict the outbreak of Ebola cases and deaths and a study using data on human mobility, population density and transport infrastructure in West African countries to predict how the disease will spread.
