‘We can beat Ebola but must prepare for what comes next,’ says Wellcome Trust head

Jeremy Farrar, a world expert on diseases, tells of the fight against the deadly virus that spread fear this decade - and how to prepare for the health battles to come

Jeremy Farrar, head of the Wellcome Trust, has a straightforward view about the way doctors and scientists tackled the current Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. "In four or five years, we have taken a disease that was absolutely terrifying and which had an enormously high death rate - more than 80% - and we have turned it, potentially, into something that is preventable and treatable."

The fact this has been done in a nation in the middle of a civil war is "simply miraculous", added Farrar, a world expert on emerging diseases. "It is a truly phenomenal achievement. If you do not celebrate that, you cannot celebrate anything else."

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