WHO urged to allow experimental drugs in "dire" Ebola outbreak

Image: Volunteers prepare to remove the bodies of people who were suspected of contracting Ebola and died in the community in the village of Pendebu, north of Kenema August 2 , 2014. REUTERS/WHO/Tarik Jasarevic/Handout via Reuters

trust.org - August 5th, 2014 - Kate Kelland

Three of the world's leading Ebola specialists called on Tuesday for experimental drugs and vaccines to be offered to people in West Africa, where a vast outbreak of the deadly disease is raging in three countries.

Noting that American aid workers who contracted the disease in Liberia were given an unapproved medicine before being evacuated back to the United States, the specialists - including Peter Piot, who co-discovered Ebola in 1976 - said Africans affected by the same outbreak should get the same chance.

Piot, David Heymann and Jeremy Farrar, all influential infectious disease professors and respectively directors of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the Chatham House Centre on Global Health Security, and the Wellcome Trust, said there were several antiviral drugs, monoclonal antibodies and vaccines under study for possible use against Ebola.

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