Ebola News Update 2014: Testing to Begin for Ebola Treatments in Guinea and Liberia
Continuing the fight against Ebola, Doctors Without Borders has announced it will be part of testing trials for three different Ebola treatments.
The volunteer medical organization will partake in trials in Guinea and Liberia beginning in December in an attempt to see which remedy is effective.
Doctors Without Borders (or MSF in French) announced in a statement on Thursday that it will join with the University of Oxford, The French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM) and the Antwerp Institute of Tropical Medicine (ITM) to test two drugs and a blood therapy. The trials will begin in December and initial results are expected by February 2015.
MSF will conduct tests of the drug favipiravir in Guéckédou, Guinea with INSERM. At the Donka Ebola centre in Conakry, Guinea ITM "will lead a trial of convalescent whole blood and plasma therapy." The Oxford team would test the drug brincidofovir. The WHO and the involved nations' health officials will also be part of the tests.
The plasma treatment would take blood from people who survived the virus to test the antibodies that were resistant to the virus. According to Johan van Griensven from ITM the procedure has worked with other diseases and they want to test its effect on Ebola.
The organization has also encouraged drug makers to continue production of the drugs as trials continues so that there is not time wasted in between testing and distribution. However, MSF's Dr. Annick Antierens said, "We need to keep in mind that there is no guarantee that these therapies will be the miracle cure."
According to Reuters, the clinical trial conducted by the University of Oxford will be conducted in Liberia. The American company Chimerix produces the drug brincidofovir and the Japan's FujiFilm produces the drug favipiravir.
The WHO's latest estimates show more than 14,000 people around the world are infected with the Ebola virus and more than 5,000 have died. Most of these cases are in Africa.
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