Spanish priest dies as death toll rises to 1,013
• Liberia gets drug ZMapp
It is ethical to offer unproven drugs or vaccines to people infected or at risk in West Africa’s deadly Ebola outbreak, a World Health Organization panel of medical ethics experts ruled yesterday, but cautioned supplies will be limited.
The death toll from the worst ever outbreak of the highly contagious disease has climbed to 1,013 of the more than 1,848 people it has infected since it was discovered in remote southeastern Guinea in March, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
The panel said any provision of experimental Ebola medicines would require “informed consent, freedom of choice, confidentiality, respect for the person, preservation of dignity and involvement of the community”. The drugs should also be properly tested in the best possible clinical trials, it said. The ethics meeting was called after experimental Ebola drug ZMapp, made by U.S. biotech company Mapp Biopharmaceutical, was given to two American health workers infected with Ebola in Liberia. There are no licensed treatments or vaccines for Ebola.
Meanwhile, Liberia said yesterday it would treat two infected doctors with the scarce experimental Ebola drug ZMapp, the first Africans to receive the treatment, while authorities in Spain said a 75-year-old priest Miguel Pajares who received the drug had died of the disease.
Pajares was airlifted from Liberia on August 7 after contracting the disease while working for a non-governmental organization in the country. The Spanish government had announced on Sunday that Pajares, the first European infected by the strain, would also be treated with ZMapp manufactured by California-based Mapp Biopharmaceutical.
Liberia’s information minister Lewis Brown said yesterday that the scarce experimental drug, of which a WHO spokeswoman said only 12 doses had been made, was due to be given to two Liberian doctors after United States authorities approved its export.
This would be the first time the treatment would be used on Africans. Brown said the Liberian government had received written consent from the two doctors who he identified as Zukunis Ireland and Abraham Borbor for the treatment, which has not been fully tested in humans.
A statement on the Liberian presidency’s website had earlier said U.S. President Barack Obama had approved export of ZMapp but the minister said this was incorrect.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Department said U.S. authorities had simply assisted in connecting the Liberian government with the drug’s manufacturer and followed procedures for the export of pharmaceuticals.

Ebola: WHO approves use of trial drugs in West Africa