{{A recent deadly outbreak of the Ebola virus disease (EVD) has gripped 4 West African countries in the most severe Ebola virus outbreak ever recorded.
There have been 932 deaths and over 1700 cases reported by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as of 4 August 2014.
The outbreak that began in Guinea in March 2014 has since spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone and most recently Nigeria. }}
Much to Africans shock, two American healthcare workers, Dr Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol who were caring for Ebola patients in Monrovia Liberia were given an ‘experimental’ antibody cocktail called ZMAPP when they got infected with the virus before being flown to an Atlanta Hospital for treatment. Both Brantly who arrived on August 2 and Writebol who arrived 3 days later are reported to be showing signs of improvement.
ZMAPP is reported to have been developed by Mapp Biopharmaceutical in San Diego according to a Bloomberg report. The Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Dr Anthony Fauci said in a CBS This Morning interview that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is slated to begin a human vaccine trial in September 2014.
The vaccine could be in production by January 2015 and ready by July of the same year. “We tested it in monkeys; it looks very good. It protects monkeys completely from challenge with Ebola. They don’t get sick and they don’t die, whereas unvaccinated monkeys all do,” said Fauci, in the report.
In an interview with Fox news, Professor Erica Sapphire who collaborated in the research that developed the drug said that she was surprised by the speed in which Brantly was reported to have responded to the serum that was administered to him.
When asked why the serum is not made widely available, Sapphire stated that not enough human appropriate material existed and that a lot of logistical and ethical questions had yet to be answered before they could consider developing the serum for human consumption.
However, she obliterated the argument that the US health officials have made by saying that it would take months before more amounts of the ZMAPP serum could be made.
“It would probably take a couple of weeks to make another batch in kilogram quantities. The manufacture and the timing are solvable problems.” When asked if she would take the serum she said “Absolutely! Your alternative is to get the Ebola virus.”
However, many West Africans face the alternative as the Ebola virus continues to spread like bushfire. American officials have insisted that this life-saving serum is in negligible quantities with President Barack Obama, who hosted an Africa summit this week, pledging to help “nip as early as possible” any additional outbreaks.
Nigeria’s Health Minister told a news conference in his country that he had asked the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about access to the drug. But a CDC spokesman said Wednesday “there are virtually no doses available.”
The lack of wider availability of the drug “shows simply that white patients and black patients do not have the same value in the eyes of world medicine,” said Nouridine Sow, a sociology professor at the Universal Institute of Guinea.
The Ebola virus that has a 90% fatality rate has created a state of emergency in West African countries. The recent treatment of the 2 Americans infected with the virus has sparked a debate by Kenyans on Twitter (KOT) dubbed “You are a dark skin no one cares”.
Thousands of Africans continue to die, while the USA continues to test the suitability of a drug that may curb the most severe outbreak of Ebola in history.
The author is an International Relations Student at USIU
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