Lack of coordination during Ebola outbreak was a “lost opportunity” to test therapies

A coordinated scientific response to the Ebola epidemic was lacking, global health experts have told MPs.

In evidence given to the science and technology select committee a group of academic, commercial, and government scientists said that research capacity and the will to respond to the epidemic in west Africa were plentiful but that coordination was not.

Trudie Lang, professor of global health research and head of the Global Health Network at the University of Oxford, told the committee that research would have to be embedded into the initial response to disease outbreaks to ensure that potential drugs could be tested early on and that a proper research infrastructure could be set up.

She said that five research teams were working on five different drugs and that it was left …