WHO to convene ethical review of experimental treatment for Ebola
WHO statement
6 August 2014
Early next week, WHO will convene a panel of medical ethicists to explore the use of experimental treatment in the ongoing Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Currently there is no registered medicine or vaccine against the virus, but there are several experimental options under development.
The recent treatment of two health workers from Samaritan’s Purse with experimental medicine has raised questions about whether medicine that has never been tested and shown to be safe in people should be used in the outbreak and, given the extremely limited amount of medicine available, if it is used, who should receive it.
“We are in an unusual situation in this outbreak. We have a disease with a high fatality rate without any proven treatment or vaccine,” says Dr Marie-Paule Kieny, Assistant Director-General at the World Health Organization. “We need to ask the medical ethicists to give us guidance on what the responsible thing to do is.”
The gold standard for assessing new medicine involves a series of trials in humans, starting small to make sure the medicine is safe to use. Then, the studies are expanded to more people to see how effective it is, and how best to use it.
The guiding principle with use of any new medicine is ‘do no harm’. Safety is always the main concern.

WHO: Global Alert and Response (GAR) – Disease Outbreak News [to 9 August 2014]
http://www.who.int/csr/don/en/
:: Ebola virus disease update – West Africa 8 August 2014

CDC/MMWR Watch [to 9 August 2014]
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/mmwr_wk.html
:: CDC’s surge response to West African Ebola Outbreak – Press Release
August 6, 2014
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is rapidly increasing its ongoing efforts to curb the expanding West African Ebola outbreak and deploying staff to four African nations currently affected: Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Nigeria.
MMWR Weekly – August 8, 2014 / Vol. 63 / No. 31
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Ebola: World Bank Group Mobilizes Emergency Funding to Fight Epidemic in West Africa
WASHINGTON, August 4, 2014 – With the latest death toll from the West Africa Ebola epidemic now at 887, the World Bank Group today pledged as much as US $200 million in emergency funding to help Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone contain the spread of Ebola infections, help their communities cope with the economic impact of the crisis, and improve public health systems throughout West Africa