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Ebola virus: British experts urge US and WHO to give Africans cure
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of The Independent (One of the UK's leading newspapers)


The Independent (One of the UK's leading newspapers), August 6, 2014
Posted: August 11th, 2014
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/ebola-outbrea...

Three of Britains leading Ebola specialists have said experimental treatments for the deadly Ebola virus must be offered to the people of West Africa, after two US aid workers were administered with the cure in Liberia. The two missionaries, Dr Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, are alive and now being cared for at a specialist isolation unit in Atlanta. Though the pair remain weak and there is no way of knowing at this stage how much of a help the new drug has actually been the fact that it was given to the two Americans has resulted in widespread criticism and recriminations in West Africa. Almost 900 people have died from the Ebola virus across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone since the latest outbreak began in February this year. Some strains can have fatality rates of up to 90 per cent, though that of the current crisis appears to be around 60 per cent. Now Peter Piot, who discovered Ebola in 1976, David Heymann, the director of the Chatham House Centre on Global Health Security and Jeremy Farrar from the Wellcome Trust have said there are in fact several drugs and vaccines under study that could be used to combat the disease. Liberias assistant health minister, Tolbert Nyenswah, said that the news of Dr Brantly and Ms Writebols treatment had made our job very difficult as dying patients and their relatives in Africa request the same cure. The US aid workers were given ZMapp, a drug made from antibodies produced in a lab that has never gone through human trials or been approved by the USs FDA Food and Drug Administration. Piot, Farrar and Heymann questioned why Africans were not being given the same chance.

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