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.
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.
(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.
Ebola is one of the world’s most deadly diseases. It is a highly infectious virus that can kill up to 90 percent of the people who catch it, causing terror among infected communities.
Ebola is so infectious that patients need to be treated in isolation by staff wearing protective clothing. MSF has over 670 staff on the ground and we have brought in more than 40 tonnes of equipment and supplies to help fight the epidemic.
I believe that structural adaptivity will become generally accepted in our world even without conscious effort. As change continues speeding up, and as planners, developers, futurists, risk managers, and many others come to recognize that change is coming at an accelerating rate and that the future is ever more uncertain and unpredictable, they will focus on adaptivity. However, the longer we wait for people to realize this, the greater the chances are that much harm will occur that should have been avoided or mitigated by the resilience we should have been already building.
The facilitation strategies and techniques that I propose are primarily intended to show some logical possibilities. Hopefully other people will be better able than I am to come up with the best ones.
For now, I will present the full list of the possibilities that I have come up with and then present a discussion of a few of them. <!--break-->
ABUJA, Aug. 7 (Xinhua) -- President Goodluck Jonathan declares a national emergency in a statement on Friday, saying 1.9 billion naira (11.6 million U.S. dollars) will be released to prevent further spread of the Ebola Virus.
He also urged Nigerians to desist from spreading rumors about the virus and advised school owners across the country to consider extending the current holiday.
He directed relevant government agencies to ensure that all possible steps are taken to effectively contain the threat of the Ebola virus in line with international protocols and best practices.
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