Liberian doctor who received rare Ebola drug ZMapp dies. August 2014 – AFRICA - But Mapp Biopharmaceutical says it will take time to replenish its exhausted stocks of ZMapp and scientists say it is too early to confirm the value of the medication that has been tested on laboratory animals but not previously on humans. The disease has reaped a grim toll on healthcare workers, often working long hours in tough conditions at low-tech facilities, often lacking adequate protective gear. Nearly 100 have died, according to the World Health Organization, including doctor Sheik Umar Khan, who was considered a hero in his native Sierra Leone for leading the fight against Ebola. Doctors at the Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) facility where he was treated agonized over the ethics of giving him ZMapp and the risk of a backlash if it was perceived to have killed him. They decided against it. Victims suffer vomiting, diarrhoea, internal and external bleeding in the final stages of the disease, leaving their bodies coated in the virus. Liberia, where Ebola is spreading fastest, received three doses of ZMapp on Aug. 13 and used them to treat three doctors: Borbor and Zukunis Ireland from Liberia and Aroh Cosmos Izchukwu from Nigeria. Initially, officials said they were responding to treatment but Information Minister Lewis Brown said Borbor died on Sunday. A Spanish priest treated with ZMapp this month also died. The World Health Organization (WHO), the health department of the United Nations (UN), revealed on Friday that the Ebola virus (EBOV) epidemic that’s gripped central Africa has now claimed over 1,400 lives. Adding to the bad news, supplies of the experimental drug ZMapp have reportedly been exhausted and a recent death of a ZMapp-treated doctor is increasing questions of the drug’s efficacy, as health workers in Africa desperately search for a way to treat — or at least stop the spread of — the deadly virus.
Posted on: Tue, 26 Aug 2014 08:04:06 +0000