NEW YORK, August 8 (RIA Novosti) - Experimental new Ebola drugs are untested and should not be used in the West African outbreak, the United States Government’s Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention said.
“There are … a number of groups working on various kinds of treatments and vaccines to be used prior to exposure. None of them have been evaluated thoroughly, either here in the US by the FDA [Food and Drug Administration] or by any other regulatory organization in any other country,” the deputy director of CDC's National Center for Emerging Zoonotic and Infectious Diseases, Stephan Monroe told RIA Novosti Thursday.
“And so unfortunately none of these products are at the point where they could be used safely in this kind of environment. And so we're not recommending the use of experimental therapies or vaccination at this time.”
There is no licensed treatment or vaccine for the Ebola virus. Medics use rehydration fluid and antibiotics to fight infections. Some groups have called for new drugs to be rolled out in Africa after two US aid workers responded positively to an experimental treatment known as Zmapp.
More than 930 people have died in the worst Ebola outbreak in history and the first to have occurred in West Africa. It began in southern Guinea in February and spread to Liberia and Sierra Leone. Some cases have also been reported in Nigeria.
