WHO grants ethics approval for use of experimental Ebola drug - Zmapp

The World Health Organization declared Tuesday that it's ethical to use unproven Ebola drugs and vaccines in the outbreak in West Africa provided the right conditions are met.

"In the particular circumstances of this outbreak and provided certain conditions are met, the panel reached consensus that it is ethical to offer unproven interventions with as yet unknown efficacy and adverse effects, as potential treatment or prevention," the agency said in a statement.

The panel said "more detailed analysis and discussion" are needed to decide how to achieve fair distribution in communities and among countries, since there is an extremely limited supply of the experimental drugs and vaccines.

The statement from the UN health agency came amid a worldwide debate over the medical ethics surrounding the Ebola outbreak. However the agency sidestepped the key questions of who should get the limited drugs and how that should be decided.

WHO says 1,013 people have died so far in the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and authorities have recorded 1,848 suspected or confirmed cases.

Two Americans and reportedly a Spanish priest have gotten an experimental Ebola treatment never tested in humans and two more Ebola treatments were said to be on their way to treat two doctors in Liberia. ZMapp, a cocktail of monoclonal antibodies, was developed in part at the Canadian National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg.