They are Christian medical professionals who gave up well above average salaries in the United States to provide medical care to people who otherwise may not have had access to it.

I can't even begin to wrap my mind around you asking if they had the right to be there. They weren't there on vacation, they felt an obligation to assist those in need who they were uniquely qualified to help.

> I can't even begin to wrap my mind around you asking if they had the right to be there.

There's a pretty long and often controversial history around European & American missionaries in Africa (both purely religious missionaries and hybrid humanitarian/religious missionaries), so I can see the question coming up. However I believe in this case it was a sanctioned trip complying with local law and overseen by international medical organizations.

Samaritan's Purse was mentioned in the article. I did some volunteer construction work with them in Mississippi a year after Hurricane Katrina. We did mention we were a religious group when people asked but we didn't spend time proselytizing. We were there to help people regardless of their religious beliefs. Nothing was asked in return for our service.

I'm betting the Mapp Pharma, pharmaceutical company, paid for everything. After all, this represents an incredible opportunity for them to test their drug.

More importantly, they get public exposure and the government sponsor for their research will more likely resume this project. It was shelved due to budgetary reasons.

However, their project is not really going to be able to compete with companies like Tekmira who have begun human testing, having a much higher efficacy in Primates (and likely humans) and are simply further along.

Ebola would unlikely be a block buster drug for any company - however, it allows them to research technologies and systems for other, more profitable things.