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Source: http://www.canada.com/health/Spain+...eat+priest+evacuated+from/10108158/story.html
Serious ethical questions arise over experimental Ebola drug after only 3 Westerners get it
By By Ciaran Giles And Maria Cheng, The Associated Press August 11, 2014 12:20 PM
MADRID - In a development that raises a host of ethical issues, Spain announced it had obtained a scarce U.S.-made experimental Ebola drug to treat a Spanish missionary priest infected with the killer virus.
So far the experimental drug ZMapp has been used to treat two infected Americans and a Spaniard but no Africans for a hemorrhagic disease that has been ravaging West Africa for months and has killed about 50 per cent of those it infects. That news came as medical experts debated the ethical questions surrounding experimental Ebola drugs and vaccines during a teleconference Monday organized by the U.N. health agency.
There is no known cure or licensed treatment for Ebola, which has killed over 960 people in the current outbreak in West Africa. The World Health Organization has called the Ebola outbreak ? which emerged in Guinea in March and has since spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone and possibly Nigeria ? an international health emergency and urged nations worldwide to battle the disease.
The drug's maker, Mapp Pharmaceutical Inc. of San Diego, says on its website that "very little of the drug is currently available" and that it is co-operating with government agencies to increase production as quickly as possible.
Nigerian officials say they had asked U.S. health authorities about getting the Ebola drug last week...
Serious ethical questions arise over experimental Ebola drug after only 3 Westerners get it
By By Ciaran Giles And Maria Cheng, The Associated Press August 11, 2014 12:20 PM
MADRID - In a development that raises a host of ethical issues, Spain announced it had obtained a scarce U.S.-made experimental Ebola drug to treat a Spanish missionary priest infected with the killer virus.
So far the experimental drug ZMapp has been used to treat two infected Americans and a Spaniard but no Africans for a hemorrhagic disease that has been ravaging West Africa for months and has killed about 50 per cent of those it infects. That news came as medical experts debated the ethical questions surrounding experimental Ebola drugs and vaccines during a teleconference Monday organized by the U.N. health agency.
There is no known cure or licensed treatment for Ebola, which has killed over 960 people in the current outbreak in West Africa. The World Health Organization has called the Ebola outbreak ? which emerged in Guinea in March and has since spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone and possibly Nigeria ? an international health emergency and urged nations worldwide to battle the disease.
The drug's maker, Mapp Pharmaceutical Inc. of San Diego, says on its website that "very little of the drug is currently available" and that it is co-operating with government agencies to increase production as quickly as possible.
Nigerian officials say they had asked U.S. health authorities about getting the Ebola drug last week...