Finally

WASHINGTON (AFP) – A US company that makes an
experimental drug for treating the often deadly Ebola virus
said Monday it has sent all its available supplies to West
Africa.

Some 961 people have died from the hemorrhagic fever in
Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and Nigeria since March
during the largest Ebola outbreak in history.

“In responding to the request received this weekend from a
West African nation, the available supply of ZMapp is
exhausted,” said a statement on the Mapp Bio website.

“Any decision to use ZMapp must be made by the patients’
medical team,” it said, adding that the drug was “provided
at no cost in all cases.”

The biomedical collaboration between US and Canadian
researchers involves a drug that is manufactured in tobacco
leaves and is hard to produce on a large scale.

The company did not reveal which nation received the
doses, or how many were sent.
CNN reported that Liberia was to receive the sample doses.

The two American missionary workers who fell ill with Ebola
while working in Monrovia last month were given doses of
the drug.

Both have been transported to an isolation unit at Emory
University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, where they are
receiving continuous care.

A Spanish priest who was sickened with Ebola has also
been given a dose.

The ethics of distributing experimental medications to some
people but not others was the focus of a special meeting of
the World Health Organization on Monday.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has
repeatedly stressed that the drug’s effects are unknown,
since it has not been through a process of rigorous clinical
trials.

There is no medicine or vaccine for Ebola on the world
market.