Experimental drugs poised for use in Ebola outbreak
Practical and ethical questions Whether that will include deploying experimental drugs in addition to the vaccine is now under discussion. The WHO is consulting experts to consider the evidence for such treatments, and the medical humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is talking to DRC officials about the possibility of using experimental Ebola medicines, says Annick Antierens, who coordinates Ebola clinical trials for MSF. Although the rVSV-ZEBOV vaccine could help to prevent people from becoming infected, Antierens says, experimental treatments might still be needed because officials lack a thorough understanding of where Ebola first emerged during this outbreak or how it is spreading. So there are likely to be very many people who have already been infected. “It we’re lucky and the disease doesn’t spread, the outbreak will be quickly resolved and we will have to use few experimental products,” Antierens says. “But if we’re unlucky we’ll need to use them.”
