Ebola Virus Outbreak 2014 Symptoms & Cure: 'Vaccine Available by 2015' Confirms WHO

According to the health agency of the United Nations, a vaccine against the deadly Ebola virus would be ready for the public by next year.

Telling AFP yesterday, Marie-Paule Kieny, Assistant Director General of the World Health Organisation (WHO) has said that clinical trials are expected to begin soon and that the time frame is realistic, The Independent reported. As of the moment, there is no cure nor any medicinal vaccine to protect humans from the virus, which has already taken over some parts of Western African, and had killed over 900 people since the outbreak in March.

Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia have each launched national protocols in the hopes of controlling the virus. The outbreak in the Western African cities has been considered to be the largest and the most brutal in history, which prompted the declaration of an international public health emergency in order for global health experts to mobilize their resources and step in to control the outbreak.

In a New York Times report, the outbreak was considered to have started from two-year-old boy in southeastern Guinea. The boy, dubbed Patient Zero, had died from the disease on December 6 after falling ill two days before. The boy's home is on the border of Sierra Leone and Liberia and is the intersection of the three most affected nations in West Africa.

Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, insinuated that if the initial response was aggressive, the outbreak would most likely have been contained within Ground Zero. He told the Times, "That's obviously the case. Look at what's happening now. A couple of months ago, there was a false sense of confidence that it was controlled, a stepping back, and then it flared up worse than before."

Meanwhile, concerns about the Ebola virus spreading outside of West Africa have escalated after reports of missionaries who have worked with infected patients in West Africa are set to return to North Carolina. The Los Angeles Times said on Sunday that officials of Charlotte-based mission organization SIM USA assured the public that the missionaries would be quarantined as soon as they arrive in the U.S., and will not be revealing their identities for privacy purposes.

"No returning SIM USA staff member is sick or has symptoms of Ebola infection," the mission group wrote in a statement.

The state Department of Health and Human Services and the Mecklenburg County Health Department also said in a joint statement, "This measure is being taken out of an abundance of caution, and it is important to remember that there are no confirmed or suspected cases of Ebola in North Carolina."

The Ebola virus could be spread via direct contact with the blood, organs or other secretions of people who have been infected with the virus. If you are experiencing sudden fever, muscle pain and headaches, intense weakness, diarrhea, vomiting, and had been in contact with someone who has traveled from West Africa, patients are urged to visit their hospital and inform medical personnel about their symptoms.