Spain has imported a U.S.-made experimental Ebola drug to treat a Spanish missionary priest who was evacuated from Liberia last week after testing positive for the killer virus.
The Health Ministry announced Monday that the ZMapp drug, made by Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc. of San Diego, was obtained in Geneva this weekend and brought to Madrid to treat Miguel Pajares. The 75-year-old priest was evacuated from Liberia and placed in isolation Thursday at Madrid’s Carlos III Hospital.
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The ethical questions surrounding experimental Ebola drugs and vaccines were being debated Monday during a teleconference of medical ethicists and other experts organized by the World Health Organization.
There is no known cure or licensed treatment for Ebola, which has killed more than 1,000 people in the current outbreak in West Africa.
EBOLA: WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
EXPERIMENTAL DRUG: AMERICAN PATIENT SAID TO BE IMPROVING
(How does ZMapp work? Read more on the experimental treatment )
Two Americans diagnosed with Ebola in Liberia and evacuated back to the United States have been treated with ZMApp, which has never been tested in humans and whose effectivness is still uncertain. One of the Americans, Kent Brantly, said last week that his condition was improving and the husband of the aid worker being treated with Brantly said the same thing. Both are being treated in isolation at an Atlanta hospital.
At least one country in West Africa has expressed interest in the experimental drug. Nigeria’s health minister, Onyenbuchi Chukwu, said at a news conference last week that he had asked U.S. health officials about access but was told the manufacturer would have to agree.
Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said “there are virtually no doses available,” a CDC spokesman said last week, before the announcement that Spain was also using the drug.
NIGERIA: ONE MORE CASE CONFIRMED
Nigeria’s Health Minister says that the West African country has one more confirmed Ebola case, a nurse who was treating Patrick Sawyer, the Liberian-American who flew into the country with the disease and died of it last month.
Chukwu told reporters in Abuja, the capital, that the nurse tested positive for the virus over the weekend. That brings the total of confirmed Ebola cases in Nigeria to 10, including two who have already died, Sawyer and another nurse. The other eight cases are being treated in isolation. He said all nine Nigerians were infected through direct contact with Sawyer.
Chukwu said Nigerian authorities have 177 primary and secondary contacts of Sawyer under surveillance.
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