Untested drugs raises Liberians hopes

Anticipating the arrival of an experimental drug to treat Ebola, Liberia said on Tuesday (12.08.2014) it had requested samples and they would be brought into the country "by a representative of the US government."

The drug ZMapp would be administered to two Liberian doctors who had become infected with the virus, it said.

Liberian information minister Lewis Brown said his country had requested the drug without hesitation and they were looking forward to working on a "clinical trial of that and any other drug that is known, or accepted to have, a curative effect on Ebola victims. We think our people deserve that choice."

The drug, made by private US company Mapp Pharmaceuticals, has shown promising results but is still in an early phase of development. Clinical trials on humans have not yet been carried out.

Mapp said in a statement it had now sent all its available supplies to West Africa.

"In responding to the request received from a West African nation, the available supply of ZMapp is exhausted."

The company did not reveal which nation had received the doses, or how many had been sent.

But a statement on Tuesday released by a UK-based public relations firm representing the Liberian government said the treatment would be arriving in Liberia in the next 48 hours.

The statement confirmed that the two Liberian doctors had given their consent to being treated with the experimental drug and that "the drug maker has agreed to supply a sufficient amount of this drug only for these two patients."

Only three other people are thought to have received the drug - two Americans and a Spanish priest infected with the virus while working in Africa. The priest, Father Miguel Pajares, died on Tuesday, but the hospital where he was staying refused to confirm that he had received the untested medication.

'Virus cannot be stopped by treating patients'

A World Health Organization panel of experts on medical ethics ruled on Tuesday that it was ethical to offer unproven drugs or vaccines as potential treatment in West Africa's Ebola outbreak.

But David Heymann, professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told DW that the virus could not be stopped by treating patients, but by three principal measures:

"The first is good infection control in hospitals so health workers and others in the hospital don't become infected. Second is community involvement, community understanding about how the infection is spread and what can be done by individuals in the community to prevent themselves from being infected, either during burial practices or caring for sick people. The third - and most important after hospital control - is tracing all those who had contact with the patient with Ebola and putting them under surveillance for a fever for a period of up to 30 days."

'But excuse me, do we have a choice?'

In Liberia, people responded positively to the news that experimental treatment was on its way. "I think it is good even though it was previously (only) tested on primates and now is being tested on two American health workers and we are getting reports that they are getting well," one Liberian told DW correspondent Julius Kanubah in Monrovia. "It is a very, very good thing to hear that the drug is on its way to Liberia," one woman added.

Former Liberian Health Minister Senator Peter Coleman, himself a medical practitioner, told DW that even drugs approved by the FDA (US Food and Drug Administration), by the different pharmaceutical regulatory arms of countries around the world, had collateral effects. Once you give drugs to people, you watch out for collateral, side effects - adverse effects, he said. "So once this drug is given to our people here, clinicians will monitor. But excuse me, do we have a choice? If your don't give these drugs, these people will die," he added.

Ebola has already claimed more than 300 lives in Liberia and a third province, Lofa, was placed under quarantine on Monday after similar measures were enacted in Bomi and Grand Cape Mount. President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has also banned state officials from travelling abroad for a month and ordered those outside the country to return within a week.