Japanese scientists have developed a faster method that detects the presence of the Ebola virus in under 30 minutes.

A team from Nagasaki University led by Jiro Yasuda, a professor of infectious diseases, said their process is also cheaper compared to the system currently used in West Africa.

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The Japanese method takes less than 30 minutes and can be conducted even in rural areas that don't have power cables.

Yasuda confirms their new method is simpler and can be used in countires where expensive testing is not available to the public.

How does it work? Yasuda and his team have developed a "primer" that amplifies only those genes specifically found in the Ebola virus in an infected blood sample.

With existing techniques, ribonucleic acid or RNA, which is the building block of genes, is then extracted from the virus present in the blood sample.

Using testing equipment from Japan's Eiken Chemical Company, the blood sample synthesizes the viral DNA and is mixed with primers where it is heated to 65 degrees Celsius.

If Ebola is present in the blood sample, the DNA only specific to the virus will be amplified in 30 minutes or less. It will become instantly cloudy as a visual confirmation of the virus.

The method used today is called the polymerase chain reaction or PCR, which is widely used to detect Ebola virus. PCR requires doctors to heat and cool samples repeatedly, which usually takes two hours.

Yasuda's new method will only need a small battery operated warmer. The entire testing system will cost only a few hundred U.S. dollars that developing countries can hopefully afford.

According to the World Health Organization, the current outbreak in Africa has infected more than 3,000 people. The epidemic has been accelerating in an unprecedented rate that is 40 percent higher than past infections rates.

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