All available supplies of an experimental drug for treating deadly Ebola virus has been sent for free to West Africa, according to a US company.
Over 1000 people have already died from
Ebola in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and Nigeria since March during
the largest Ebola outbreak in history.
According to a statement on the Mapp Bio
website, “in responding to the request received this weekend from a West
African nation, the available supply of ZMapp is exhausted.”
“Any decision to use ZMapp must be made by the
patients’ medical team,” it said, adding that the drug was “provided at
no cost in all cases.”
Reportedly, US and Canadian researchers
invented an experimental drug that is manufactured in tobacco leaves
and is hard to produce on a large scale.
However, the company didn’t reveal which nation received the doses, or how many were sent.
The US Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention has repeatedly stressed that the drug’s effects are unknown,
since it has not been through a process of rigorous clinical trials.
According to CNN, Liberia was to receive the sample doses.
The two American missionary workers who fell ill with Ebola while working in Monrovia last month were given doses of the drug.
Both have been transported to an isolation
unit at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, where they are
receiving continuous care.
A Spanish priest who was sickened with Ebola has also been given a dose.
The ethics of distributing experimental
medications to some people but not others was the focus of a special
meeting of the World Health Organization on Monday.
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