It is ethical to offer unproven drugs or vaccines as potential treatments or preventions in West Africa’s deadly Ebola outbreak, a World Health Organisation (WHO) panel of medical ethics experts has ruled.
The United Nations (UN) health agency met to discuss whether various experimental medicines and vaccines being developed for Ebola might be used in the outbreak, despite not having been fully tested or licensed.
The meeting was called after an experimental Ebola drug called ZMapp, made by US biotech company Mapp Biopharmaceutical, was given to two American health workers infected with Ebola in Liberia.
The US citizens are in hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, and have been showing signs of improvement.
The panel of experts said provision of experimental Ebola drugs required “informed consent, freedom of choice, confidentiality, respect for the person, preservation of dignity and involvement of the community”.
“Ebola outbreaks can be contained using available interventions like early detection and isolation, contact tracing and monitoring, and adherence to rigorous procedures of infection control,” the panel said in a statement.
“However, a specific treatment or vaccine would be a potent asset to counter the virus.”
Liberia confirmed on Tuesday (local time) it would treat two infected doctors with ZMapp, the first Africans to receive the treatment.
Ebola death toll passes 1,000
The death toll from the worst ever outbreak of the highly contagious disease has climbed to 1,013 since it was discovered in remote south-eastern Guinea in March, according to the WHO.
The grim milestone comes as Japan’s foreign aid agency starts to evacuate staff from the worst affected areas.
Eight Chinese medical workers who treated patients have also been placed in quarantine.
Spanish authorities said a 75-year-old Spanish priest who contracted Ebola in Liberia had died.
The government had announced on Sunday that Miguel Pajares, the first European infected by the strain, would also be treated with ZMapp.
The virus – one of the deadliest diseases known to man – has spread to four African countries, infecting a total 1,848 people, according to the WHO, which has branded the outbreak an international health emergency.
Although the disease can kill as many as 90 per cent of those who get it, this strain of Ebola is killing about 60 per cent of infected people.
The epidemic in one of the world’s poorest regions, where crumbling healthcare systems are unable to cope, has opened an ethical debate on the use of trial drugs on humans.
With medical staff lacking the equipment and training to tackle the first outbreak of Ebola in West Africa, more than 60 healthcare workers have died and dozens more have been infected, severely hindering countries’ ability to cope with the disease.
Information minister Lewis Brown said the Liberian government had received written consent from the two doctors – who he identified as Zukunis Ireland and Abraham Borbor – for the treatment, which has not been fully tested in humans.
“The drug maker could not export … the drug without the approval of the FDA so our authorities approached the FDA and received specific approval for the treatment of these two doctors,” Mr Brown told Reuters by telephone.
He said the drug was expected to reach Liberia within the next 48 hours.
A statement on the Liberian presidency’s website had earlier said US president Barack Obama had approved export of ZMapp but the minister said this was incorrect.
A spokesperson for the US health and human services department said US authorities had simply assisted in connecting the Liberian government with the drug’s manufacturer and followed procedures for the export of pharmaceuticals.
Mapp Biopharmaceutical said on Monday its supply of the drug has been exhausted, after the company provided doses to a West African nation, according to a report published by the Wall Street Journal.
The Liberian presidency statement said WHO head Margaret Chan had authorised the dispatch of additional doses of the experimental drug to Liberia, but Mr Brown said it was not clear if this was true.
A WHO spokeswoman said supplies were “very scarce”.
“They have less than a dozen [doses] of it,” spokeswoman Fadela Chaib told a briefing.
“It is very important to discuss who should get it … and if it is ethical to use it.”
The WHO has said the epidemic will likely continue for months as the region’s healthcare systems struggle to cope and has appealed urgently for funding and emergency medical staff.
ABC/Reuters