MOSCOW, August 25 (RIA Novosti) - If the approval of the World Health Organization (WHO) is granted, Tokyo plans to provide an experimental drug to Ebola victims, a Japanese government spokesman said Monday, according to Agence France Presse (AFP).
"Our country is prepared to provide the yet-to-be approved drug in cooperation with the manufacturer if WHO requests," Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, Yoshihide Suga, said.
"Even before WHO reaches a conclusion, we are ready to respond to individual requests (from medical workers) under certain conditions, if it is an urgent case,” Suga added.
The medication, Avigan, developed by Fujifilm Holdings, is a pill that was approved in March as an anti-influenza drug in Japan. The drug is currently in clinical tests in the United States.
As the Ebola epidemic worsens in West Africa, WHO is considering the use of unapproved drugs after a panel determined experimental treatments were ethical under the current conditions.
"We have sufficient supplies for more than 20,000 people," Fujifilm Holdings spokesman Takao Aoki was quoted as saying by AFP.
Fujifilm Holdings has received inquiries from several countries concerning the distribution of the drug, and claims it has more than enough of the medication to go around, Aoki stated.
The use of experimental drugs sparked public attention when two Americans and a Spanish priest infected with Ebola were treated with an experimental drug from the US called Zmapp, apparently saving the two Americans.
Over 2,615 cases of Ebola have been recorded in Liberia, Nigeria, Guinea and Sierra Leone so far, resulting in at least 1,427 deaths, according to WHO. There is no licensed treatment or cure for Ebola at the moment, although companies in the US, Japan and Canada have drugs in the developmental phase.
