According to reports, the experimental Ebola drug 'ZMapp' sent to West Africa arrived two days ago but no one had yet received the treatment, which officials said would go to three people, DailyMailUK, reports...
Now, officials in the country face a difficult choice of deciding which handful of Ebola patients will receive an experimental drug that could prove life-saving, ineffective or even harmful. The government had earlier said two doctors would receive the treatment, and Information Minister Lewis Brown revealed yesterday the third person would probably be another health care worker. These are the last known doses of ZMapp left.
The company based in San Diego, California, that developed it has said it will take months to build up even a modest supply. The outbreak has sparked an international debate over the ethics of giving drugs that have not yet been tested to the sick and of deciding who should get the drugs.
So far, only two Americans and one Spaniard have received ZMapp. The Americans are improving - but it is unclear what role the drug has played. The Spaniard died within days. Now Liberian officials are facing those questions.
In this outbreak, over 50 percent of those sickened with Ebola have died, according to the UN health agency. ‘The criteria of selection is difficult, but it is going to be done,’ said Dr. Moses Massaquoi, who helped Liberia obtain the drug from Mapp Biopharmaceutical.
‘We are going to look at how critical people are. We are definitely going to be focusing on medical staff.’ He added people past the ‘critical phase’ who looked likely to survive would not be chosen. Massaquoi said there was only enough of the drug to treat three people.
Treatment will be staggered, so doctors can observe the effects in one patient before moving on to the next. Last night he said the treatment had not yet started.
Arthur Caplan, director of medical ethics at New York University Langone Medical Center, said the choice of who to treat would have to balance helping the largest number of people with learning the most from the treatments.
He said the question is not ‘whose life do we save?’ but ‘who gets the chance to be experimented on?’ For that reason, recipients need to be good experimental subjects - people who have recently contracted the disease and are more likely to respond to treatment or perhaps younger patients, he said.
In order to study the long-term effects, doctors will likely prefer people who can be observed for months, which might eliminate those living in remote places, he added.
If the country with the most outbreak get medication enough for just 3 people, how many will Nigeria get?.