Ebola can no longer be called an incurable disease thanks to Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe, a virologist from Congo who was the first scientist to discover the deadly virus in 1976.
To develop the cure, Dr. Muyembe’s research and findings were used to experiment with four drugs for the first ever multi-drug randomized trial for Ebola patients.
Dr. Muyembe, who received his PhD in virology from the University of Leuven (Belgium), says that his first advancements towards developing a cure for Ebola began in the early 2000s with the use of antibodies as the basis for therapeutic medicines.
He collected blood from several Ebola survivors, and gave it to eight patients who were still infected with the virus.
In 2019, he received a prestigious award from Japanese Emperor Naruhito “for his research to confront Ebola and other deadly viruses and efforts to train legions of disease-fighters.”
