All available supplies of an experimental drug for treating the Ebola Virus Disease has been sent for free to West Africa, according to a US company.
According to a statement on US-company, Mapp Bio, website, “in responding to the request received this weekend from a West African nation, the available supply of ZMapp is exhausted.”
“Any decision to use ZMapp must be made by the patients’ medical team,” it said, adding that the drug was “provided at no cost in all cases.”
Reportedly, US and Canadian researchers invented an experimental drug that is manufactured from tobacco leaves and is hard to produce on a large scale.
Mapp Bio, however, didn’t reveal which nation received the doses, or how many were sent.
The US Center for Disease Control and Prevention has repeatedly stressed that the drug’s effects are unknown, since it has not been through a process of rigorous clinical trials.
According to CNN, Liberia was to receive the sample doses.
The two American missionary workers who fell ill with Ebola while working in Monrovia last month were given doses of the drug.
Both have been transported to an isolation unit at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, where they are receiving continuous care.
The ethics of distributing experimental medications to some people but not others was the focus of a special meeting of the World Health Organization on Monday.
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