reuters.com - By David Morgan and Sharon Begley - August 7, 2014
(Reuters) - The Obama administration is forming a special Ebola working group to consider setting policy for the potential use of experimental drugs to help the hundreds infected by the deadly disease in West Africa, U.S. officials said on Thursday.
The group is being formed under Dr. Nicole Lurie, Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response at the Department of Health and Human Services, an administration official said.
The action follows mounting international pressure as the death toll mounts to consider using untested treatments.
The move comes after the World Health Organization decided it was ethical in the circumstances to offer untested drugs to people infected by the virus.
The Canadian government has only around 1,500 doses of the vaccine, which it invented a few years ago. It has been effective in animals but has never been tested on humans.
A made-in-Canada experimental Ebola vaccine will be offered for use in the West African outbreak response, the Public Health Agency of Canada revealed Tuesday.
The news comes hours after the World Health Organization said a panel of experts advised that it would be ethical to use untested drugs and vaccines in this raging epidemic, which is several times larger than any previous outbreak.
At the center of the Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone, the villagers in Njala Ngiema are afraid to return to homes where so many died. Video Credit By Ben C. Solomon on Publish Date August 11, 2014. Image CreditTommy Trenchard for The New York Times
nytimes.com - by Adam Nossiter - August 11, 2014
NJALA NGIEMA, Sierra Leone — The signs of a deadly struggle remain: Scattered around the houses of the Ebola dead lie empty pill packages, their plastic casings punched through. Nearby in the mud are used packets of oral rehydration salts. The pills did not work, and the hurried trip to the hospital, if there was one, came too late.
A Spanish priest who contracted Ebola while working in Liberia has died in hospital, health authorities in Madrid have confirmed. Father Miguel Pajares (75) was the first European infected by a strain of the virus that has killed more than 1,000 people in West Africa.
He was airlifted from Liberia on August 7th after becoming infected while working for a non-governmental organisation there.
He was flown to Spain for treatment with his co-worker Juliana Bohi, a nun who has since tested negative for the disease.
The World Health Organization declared Tuesday that it's ethical to use unproven Ebola drugs and vaccines in the outbreak in West Africa provided the right conditions are met.
"In the particular circumstances of this outbreak and provided certain conditions are met, the panel reached consensus that it is ethical to offer unproven interventions with as yet unknown efficacy and adverse effects, as potential treatment or prevention," the agency said in a statement.
The panel said "more detailed analysis and discussion" are needed to decide how to achieve fair distribution in communities and among countries, since there is an extremely limited supply of the experimental drugs and vaccines.
The statement from the UN health agency came amid a worldwide debate over the medical ethics surrounding the Ebola outbreak. However the agency sidestepped the key questions of who should get the limited drugs and how that should be decided.
WHO says 1,013 people have died so far in the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and authorities have recorded 1,848 suspected or confirmed cases.
Volunteers prepare to remove the bodies of people who were suspected of contracting Ebola and died in the community in the village of Pendebu, Sierra Leone, on August 2, 2014. REUTERS/WHO/Tarik Jasarevic
cbsnews.com - By Agata Blaszczak-Boxe - August 11, 2014
The current Ebola outbreak in West Africa has rapidly grown into the largest and deadliest in history, claiming more than 960 lives so far in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria. The death toll is already more than three times higher than any previous Ebola outbreak. Experts say a number of factors have contributed to making this outbreak so much worse than those that came before.
(CNN) -- The government of Liberia says that sample doses of the experimental Ebola drug ZMapp will be sent there to treat doctors who have contracted the deadly virus.
The White House and Food and Drug Administration approved the Liberian request for the drug to be made available to them.
Liberia identified itself as the recipient of the drug after the company that makes ZMapp said earlier that its supply was exhausted after fulfilling the request of a West African country, which it did not name.
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