The Case for Improved Diagnostic Tools to Control Ebola Virus Disease in West Africa and How to Get There

PLOS by Arlene C. Chua,Jane Cunningham,Francis Moussy, Mark D. Perkins,and Pierre Formenty      June 11 2015

 ...Since the identification of Ebola in Guinea in March 2013, rapid deployment of international mobile laboratories through WHO networks—Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN) [2] and Emerging and Dangerous Pathogens Laboratory Network (EDPLN) [3]—has been vital to outbreak control operations. Deployable laboratories from multiple international organizations have been established near Ebola treatment centers (ETC) in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone....

However, several technical and social factors conspire to delay diagnosis, starting with weak surveillance systems and slow patient access to centralized ETCs. While the mean processing time is 5 hours (time difference from when samples are received in the laboratory to when they are tested), there is a marked difference in the time from when the samples are collected from suspected patients to the time they are received by the laboratory

In recognition of the urgent need for improved Ebola diagnostics, and to guide diagnostic research and development (R&D), a consensus target product profile (TPP) has been developed by the authors and other key partners (Table 1). The intended use of the profiled product is to distinguish symptomatic patients with acute EVD infection from those with non-Ebola virus infection. The TPP outlines two sets of test characteristics: desired (ideal) and acceptable, both of which would allow for varying degrees of decentralized EVD testing through reduced requirements for laboratory infrastructure and for technical expertise in sample collection and/or running the assay...

http://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journal.pntd.0003734