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 Abraham Borbor's death could curb optimism about the drug that
mounted last week when two U.S. aid workers who caught Ebola in
Liberia were declared free of the virus after receiving the same
treatment at a hospital in the United States.
People in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia are desperate for a cure
for the contagious hemorrhagic fever that has killed at least 1,427
people since March in the deadliest outbreak the world has seen.
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.
OUTBREAK ADVANCING
There are other drugs in the pipeline and the outbreak has added
urgency to research into a disease with no cure or vaccine, but all
the drugs are unproven and have yet to clear even the initial stage
of clinical trials.
In one sign of potential progress, four monkeys survived Ebola after
being injected with Immunovaccine Inc's experimental vaccine, the
Canadian company said on Monday, an announcement that sent its stock
soaring.
West Africa's first Ebola outbreak was detected five months ago in
the forests of southeastern Guinea but it was not until Aug. 8 that
the World Health Organization declared an international health
emergency and promised more resources.
That delay drew criticism from some health groups, who said the U.N.
health agency should have responded faster.
"It appears that the outbreak is still advancing and is advancing in
many parts of the country (Sierra Leone)," David Nabarro, Ebola
response coordinator for the United Nations, told a news conference
in Sierra Leone.
In a bid to stop the virus, West African governments have closed
borders, halted flights from affected countries, stopped
international conferences and increased medical provision.
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Liberia declared a curfew last week and put two neighborhoods under
quarantine.
FLIGHT BAN
Fears of contamination on flights escalated in July when a man
infected with Ebola arrived at an airport in Lagos, Nigeria, and
collapsed. He died and five people including health care workers who
treated him have died in that country since then. Nabarro urged
countries to reverse flight bans.
"The understandable decision by some countries not to want to
receive aeroplanes that have touched ground in this country or in
its neighbors, that understandable decision has huge operational
impact ... on our ability to bring in staff and to bring in goods,"
he said.
Ebola has highlighted the gap between the care afforded to Western
patients and many who are treated in Africa. Liberia, for example,
used a school in a run down neighborhood of the capital as a
quarantine center and patients lay on the floor.
The family of a British volunteer nurse repatriated from Sierra
Leone after contracting the virus said on Monday he was in the best
place possible for treatment.
William Pooley, 29, is the first Briton to test positive for the
disease. He was flown home in a specially adapted Royal Air Force
cargo plane and transported to an isolation unit at the Royal Free
Hospital in London.
The first recorded Ebola case took place in what is now Democratic
Republic of Congo and the country declared a new Ebola outbreak in
its northern Equateur province on Sunday after two of eight patients
tested for Ebola came back positive.
The U.N. health agency said it had sent in protective equipment for
medical staff, which is not connected to the epidemic in West
Africa.
Liberia's health ministry announced on Monday that a five-person
medical team from Democratic Republic of Congo had just arrived to
help in the fight against Ebola.
(Additional reporting by Josephus Olu-Mammah and Umaru Fofana in
Sierra Leone, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Emma Farge in Dakar,
Kaori Kaneko in Tokyo and Belinda Goldsmith in London; Writing by
Matthew Mpoke Bigg; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
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