UCSF Researcher Hopes to Bring Ebola to Bay Area

Dr. Charles Chiu hopes Ebola can be brought to San Francisco.

Not as a contagion, but as the precursor to a cure.

Chiu is an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco medical school, and hopes to be able to study the current strain of Ebola to figure out how the bug works, according to the San Francisco Examiner.

The strain brought home would be a "noninfectious sample," the newspaper reported.

Ebola has killed over 900 people in West Africa since the most-recent outbreak began. An American aid worker and a doctor have both been airlifted back to the United States for treatment after contracting the disease.

Chiu hopes to be able to figure out how the virus mutates and to learn more about how it is transmitted, he told the newspaper.

He's currently examining strains from five different outbreaks from 1995 to 2007, the newspaper reported.

Copyright FREEL - NBC Local Media
Contact Us