Spanish Ebola patient gets experimental drug
Source: AP-Excite
BY CIARAN GILES and MARIA CHENG
MADRID (AP) — Spain has imported a U.S.-made experimental Ebola drug to treat a Spanish missionary priest who was evacuated from Liberia last week after testing positive for the killer virus.
The Health Ministry announced Monday that the ZMapp drug, made by Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc. of San Diego, was obtained in Geneva this weekend and brought to Madrid to treat Miguel Pajares. The 75-year-old priest was evacuated from Liberia and placed in isolation Thursday at Madrid's Carlos III Hospital.
There is no known cure or licensed treatment for Ebola, which has killed more than 1,000 people in the current outbreak in West Africa. The World Health Organization has declared the Ebola outbreak an international health emergency and urged nations worldwide to donate resources to battle the disease.
Two Americans diagnosed with Ebola in Liberia and evacuated back to the United States have been treated with the drug. One of them, Dr. Kent Brantly, said last week that his condition was improving and the husband of the aid worker being treated with Brantly said the same thing. Both are being treated in isolation at an Atlanta hospital.
FULL story at link.
In this photo taken Saturday, Aug. 9, 2014, health workers, center rear, screen people for the deadly Ebola virus before entering the Kenema Government Hospital in Kenema, 300 kilometers, (186 miles) from the capital city of Freetown, Sierra Leone. Over the decades, Ebola cases have been confirmed in 10 African countries, including Congo where the disease was first reported in 1976. But until this year, Ebola had never come to West Africa. (AP Photo/ Michael Duff)
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