The Ebola virus has continued to claim the lives of those in West Africa. 5,000 people have died as a result of the disease and 14,000 have been infected. Despite the increasing number of victims, health groups from around the globe are continuous in their efforts to dispel the disease. Doctors Without Borders is one of these health groups, and they plan to administer three different means of combatting the virus as early as next month.
The health care group, resilient and consistent in its widespread response, will test two different experimental drugs as well as blood plasma of recovered Ebola victims. Brincidofovir, from the US company Chimerix, and favipiravir, from the Japanese company Fujifilm, are the two drugs that will be offered to Ebola patients.
Other experimental drugs used in the past, such as ZMAPP, have shown promise, but the available quantities are insufficient for proper testing. The drugs that will be administered have not been through the complete traditional testing procedures. They have been tested on animals and healthy individuals, but will be administered to patients directly starting in December. These drugs, however, reportedly have the most promising efficacy in curing the Ebola virus.
The drugs and blood plasma will be administered in three different centers, each center testing a different method. Patients will be asked if they want to participate in the testing by receiving the treatments. They will have complete freedom to decide their method of treatment, be it experimental or traditional.
“We are on the front line, and when you have a disease that kills 50% to 70% of patients, then we have a certain responsibility to try to do our best to host trials for treatments in our facilities,” Bertrand Draguez, Medical Director of Doctors Without Borders, told Time.
“The worst case scenario would be to not test anything,” he said.
