Nancy Writebol, who contracted Ebola while working for a Christian charity in Liberia, arrived Tuesday at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta. Journal & Constitution/Associated Press
Three of Britain’s leading Ebola specialists have said experimental treatments for the deadly Ebola virus must be offered to the people of West Africa, after two US aid workers were administered with the cure in Liberia.
The two missionaries, Dr Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, are alive and now being cared for at a specialist isolation unit in Atlanta. Though the pair remain weak and there is no way of knowing at this stage how much of a help the new drug has actually been the fact that it was given to the two Americans has resulted in widespread criticism and recriminations in West Africa.
The US aid workers were given ZMapp, a drug made from antibodies produced in a lab that has never gone through human trials or been approved by the US’s FDA Food and Drug Administration.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said the FDA can provide access to experimental treatments by a mechanism known as an emergency investigational new drug application, and that the agency's approval is required before an experimental drug can be given in the U.S.
Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc. of San Diego, which developed ZMapp, describes the drug as a cocktail of three "humanized" monoclonal antibodies that are manufactured using tobacco plants. A monoclonal antibody is a laboratory-engineered version of natural antibodies found in humans and animals that help combat disease. Monoclonal antibodies are typically injected or infused; some already on the market treat diseases ranging from cancer to rheumatoid arthritis.
Details of how ZMapp was administered to the patients in Liberia was found and who authorized its use remained sketchy.
A second American aid worker infected with Ebola arrived at Emory University in Atlanta for treatment. Both patients there have been given an experimental drug to combat the virus. WSJ's Peter Loftus joins Lee Hawkins on Lunch Break with the details. Photo: AP
Now Peter Piot, who discovered Ebola in 1976, David Heymann, the director of the Chatham House Centre on Global Health Security and Jeremy Farrar from the Wellcome Trust have said there are in fact several drugs and vaccines under study that could be used to combat the disease.
“African governments should be allowed to make informed decisions about whether or not to use these products - for example to protect and treat healthcare workers who run especially high risks of infection,” they wrote in a joint statement.
The World Health Organization (WHO), the only body with the necessary international authority to allow such experimental treatments, “must take on this greater leadership role”, they said. “These dire circumstances call for a more robust international response,” they added.
Liberia’s assistant health minister, Tolbert Nyenswah, said that the news of Dr Brantly and Ms Writebol’s treatment had made our job very difficult as dying patients and their relatives in Africa request the same “cure. Dr Nyenswah told the Wall Street Journal: “The population here is asking: 'You said there was no cure for Ebola, but the Americans are curing it?'”
Piot, Farrar and Heymann questioned why Africans were not being given the same chance. If the deadly virus was raging though wealthy countries, they said, medical agencies would begin discussions with companies and labs developing these products and then make rapid decisions about which of them might be appropriate for compassionate use.
Experimental treatments shouldn't be rolled out generally without prior safety testing, they said in their statement, issued in London late on Tuesday. But in the face of the critical challenge in West Africa, the WHO and Western medical agencies should be helping countries weigh the risks and benefits of limited deployment of the best (drug and vaccine) candidates to those in the greatest need, while continuously monitoring safety and efficacy.
On Monday the World Bank pledged up to $200 million (£120 million) in emergency funding to help Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
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