People infected in the West Africa Ebola outbreak can be offered untested drugs, the World Health Organisation said yesterday, but scarce supplies raise questions about who gets priority in the epidemic of the virus, which has no proven treatment.
Liberia said it planned to treat two infected doctors with an unproven Ebola medicine called ZMapp, the first Africans to receive the drug, while a Spanish priest, who the Health Ministry in Madrid said had also been given ZMapp, died.
The West Africa Ebola virus epidemic – the world’s largest and deadliest so far – has killed 1,013 people in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria.
There are no licensed treatments or vaccines for Ebola, but several biotech companies and research teams have been working on potential drugs.
“There was unanimous agreement among the experts that in the special circumstances of this Ebola outbreak it is ethical to offer unregistered interventions as potential treatments or prevention,” the WHO’s assistant director general Marie-Paule Kieny said after an ethics panel published its guidance.
Far too many lives are being lost right now
The WHO-convened panel of medical ethicists said several potential drugs had passed the laboratory and animal study phases of development, and should now be fast-tracked into clinical trials as well as being made available for compassionate use.
“If these treatments can save lives – as the animal studies suggest – should we not use them to save lives, as far too many lives are being lost right now?” Kieny said.
The WHO ethics meeting was called after experimental Ebola drug ZMapp, made by US biotech company Mapp Biopharmaceutical, was given to two American aid workers infected with Ebola in Liberia.
The two US aid workers have shown some signs of improvements since being given the drug, and Kieny said she had heard reports that the treatment had had a swift and dramatic effect in these patients.
Only around 10 to 12 doses had been made of the experimental drug, according to the WHO. Liberia was preparing to treat the two Liberian doctors with ZMapp after US authorities approved its export.
A 75-year-old priest in Spain, who the Health Ministry said was also being treated with ZMapp, died in hospital in Madrid, yesterday. He contracted Ebola in Liberia while working for a non-governmental organisation.