There's no treatment designed for the Ebola strain ravaging DRC. But now there's hope

A health worker takes a woman's temperature as part of Ebola screening efforts in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo.As part of the effort to quash the outbreak, the first patients have been enrolled in a clinical trial to test two drugs against the Bundibugyo strain of the virus that is spreading there.

In addition, researchers plan to study whether another drug could protect people exposed to the virus.Daniel Buuma/Getty Images hide caption It's been over 50 days since the Ebola outbreak was declared in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda.

Clinicians on the ground are working to save dying patients, but they lack crucial tools to fight the kind of Ebola that's spreading."We urgently need treatments that can help people affected by Bundibugyo virus disease," says Amanda Rojek, a physician scientist at the University of Oxford — that's a rarer species of Ebola than the much-researched Zaire strain behind many previous outbreaks.But because of that rarity, there are no specialized treatments to give patients.Nor are there drugs that might protect those exposed to the virus from getting sick.That reality is changing.

Clinical trials are underway, or soon will be, to test new tools that health officials hope could help turn the tide against an outbreak which has already killed over 500 people and sickened more than 1,560 – and which some say could become the largest Ebola outbreak ever.Last Thursday, the World Health Organization announced that the first patients were enrolled in a clinical trial designed to test two drugs against Bundibugyo.And sometime this week, researchers will likely begin studying whether another drug could protect people exposed to the virus."One of the key lessons from recent outbreaks is that research needs to happen alongside the response, not after it," says Rojek, who is helping to coordinate the treatm...