{"id":2631,"date":"2014-08-12T11:38:03","date_gmt":"2014-08-12T05:38:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bartabangla.com\/english\/?p=2631"},"modified":"2014-08-12T11:38:03","modified_gmt":"2014-08-12T05:38:03","slug":"liberian-doctors-experimental-ebola-drug","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/liberian-doctors-experimental-ebola-drug\/","title":{"rendered":"Liberian doctors to get experimental Ebola drug"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Screenshot_31\"<\/a>BartaBangla Desk :: Liberia announced on Monday that it would soon receive doses of an experimental Ebola drug and give it to two sick doctors, making them the first Africans to receive some of the scarce treatment in a spiralling outbreak. The U.S. government confirmed that it had put Liberian officials in touch with the maker of ZMapp, and referred additional questions to Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc. In a statement, the California-based company said that in responding to a request from an unidentified West African country, it had run out of its supply of the treatment. The news comes as anger is growing over the fact that the only people to receive the experimental treatment so far have been Westerners \u2014 two Americans and a Spaniard, all of whom were evacuated to their home countries from Liberia. On Monday, the World Health Organization said 1,013 people had died in the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Authorities have recorded 1,848 suspected, probable or confirmed cases of the disease, the U.N. health agency said. The updated WHO tally includes figures from August 7-9 when 52 more people died and 69 more were infected. There is no Ebola vaccine or treatment available, but there are several in development besides ZMapp. That treatment is so new that it hasn\u2019t been tested for safety or effectiveness in humans. And the company has said it would take months to produce even modest quantities. It was unclear how much of the treatment would be sent to Liberia. \u201cThe U.S. Government assisted in connecting the Government of Liberia with the manufacturer,\u201d the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement. \u201cSince the drug was shipped for use outside the U.S., appropriate export procedures had to be followed.\u201d The Liberian statement, posted on the presidency\u2019s website, said it was also receiving an experimental treatment from the World Health Organization. It was unclear if this was also referring to ZMapp or another treatment. In the past few weeks, the experimental drug was given to two American aid workers diagnosed with the disease while working at a hospital that treated Ebola patients. On Monday, officials in Spain disclosed that the treatment was also given to a Spanish missionary priest who fell ill while working in Liberia. The Americans are said to be improving, but there\u2019s no way to know whether the drug helped, or if they are getting better on their own, as others have. Around 40 percent of those infected with Ebola are surviving the current outbreak. But some called for the untested drug to be given to Africans, too. The outbreak was first identified in March in Guinea, but it likely started months earlier. It has since spread to neighbouring Liberia and Sierra Leone, and possibly to Nigeria. \u201cThere\u2019s no reason to try this medicine on sick white people and to ignore blacks,\u201d said Marcel Guilavogui, a pharmacist in Conakry, Guinea. \u201cWe understand that it\u2019s a drug that\u2019s being tested for the first time and could have negative side effects. But we have to try it in blacks too.\u201d Some are using Twitter to demand that the drug be made available. \u201cWe can\u2019t afford to be passive while many more die,\u201d said Aisha Dabo, a Senegalese-Gambian journalist who was tweeting using the hashtag #GiveUsTheSerum on Monday. \u201cThat\u2019s why we raise our voice for the world to hear us.\u201d The ethical dilemmas involved prompted the U.N. health agency to consult on Monday with ethicists, infectious disease experts, patient representatives and the Doctors Without Borders group. Most participants in the closed teleconference were from developed countries, but Uganda and Senegal were represented. The World Health Organization said it would discuss the results of the meeting at a press conference on Tuesday. Companies can provide experimental drugs on a \u201ccompassionate use\u201d basis, usually after they have been fully tested in humans. The Food and Drug Administration approves such uses in the U.S., but has no authority overseas. Ultimately, the companies alone decide whether or not to share their products. Spain\u2019s Health Ministry said it obtained ZMapp this weekend with company permission to treat Miguel Pajares, a 75-year-old priest evacuated from Liberia and placed in isolation on Thursday at Madrid\u2019s Carlos III Hospital. \u201cThe medicine was imported from Geneva where there was one dose available in the context of an accord between the laboratory that developed the medicine, WHO and (Doctors Without Borders),\u201d the ministry said, invoking a Spanish law permitting unauthorized medication for patients with life\u2014threatening illnesses. Spanish authorities refused to comment beyond the ministry\u2019s statement, but Geneva University Hospital told The Associated Press it was involved in getting the drug to Madrid. The evacuated American aid workers, Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, have been improving at Atlanta\u2019s Emory University Hospital. They got the treatment after their international relief group Samaritan\u2019s Purse asked Kentucky BioProcessing, which produces it for Mapp Biopharmaceutical. The treatment mixes three antibodies engineered to recognise Ebola and bind to infected cells so the immune system can kill them. A Sierra Leone official said they had not asked for the drug, but the other governments said they want any treatment that might help patients recover, despite the risks of unproven medicines. \u201cThe alternative for not testing this is death, a certain death,\u201d Liberia\u2019s Information Minister, Lewis Brown, told The AP in an interview before the announcement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BartaBangla Desk :: Liberia announced on Monday that it would soon receive doses of an experimental Ebola drug and give it to two sick doctors, making them the first Africans to receive some of the scarce treatment in a spiralling outbreak. The U.S. government confirmed that it had put Liberian officials in touch with the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2631","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-feature"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2631\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}