Sierra Leone said on Tuesday it would seek a shipment of a
controversial experimental drug to fight an Ebola outbreak which has
killed 315 in the impoverished west African nation.
The ministry
of health told AFP it had prepared a letter to send to the American
manufacturer of ZMapp, an unlicensed serum being made available in
neighbouring Liberia.
"The WHO has just approved our request for
the drug ZMapp to be made available to both Sierra Leone and Liberia,"
ministry spokesperson Sidi Yahya Tunis told AFP.
"We have just
finished writing a letter which we will send to the manufacturer, copied
to WHO, for the drug to be made available to us.
"That's where we are at the moment. We hope to hear from the manufacturer within the next couple of days."
Supplies
The
WHO on Tuesday authorised the use of ZMapp as the death toll reached 1
013 in the epidemic, the worst since Ebola was first discovered four
decades ago.
But it was unclear if the treatment would be
available in Sierra Leone, which has seen 730 Ebola cases, more than any
other country.
The declaration by the UN's health agency came after ZMapp said it had sent all its available supplies to hard-hit west Africa.
Cases
have been limited to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, which account
for the bulk of victims, and Nigeria, where two people have died.
Elderly
Spanish priest Miguel Pajares, who became infected while helping
patients in Liberia, died in a Madrid hospital on Tuesday, five days
after being evacuated.
He had been treated with ZMapp, which
failed to save him but has shown positive effects on two US aid workers
also infected in Liberia.
Ethical debate
There
is no available cure or vaccine for Ebola, which the WHO has declared a
global public health emergency, and the use of experimental drugs has
stoked a fierce ethical debate.
Despite promising results for the
ZMapp treatment, made by private US company Mapp Biopharmaceutical, it
had only been tested previously on monkeys.
ZMapp is also in very
short supply but the company said it had sent all available doses to
west Africa free of charge after an outcry over its use on foreign aid
workers.
It didn't reveal which nation had received the doses, or
how many were sent, but WHO assistant director general Marie-Paule Kieny
said the agency had been told three doses were sent to Liberia.
The
use of unauthorised drugs that had proven safe and effective in monkeys
could be a "potent asset" in the fight against Ebola, she said.
'Utter dismay'
Sierra
Leone President Ernest Bai Koroma has expressed his "utter dismay" at
the "slow pace" of the international community in responding to the
outbreak.
A statement released Tuesday by the president's office
said he had contacted UN chief Ban Ki-moon to convey his disappointment
over inertia among Western nations.
He told a news conference in
Freetown late on Tuesday he was appealing to the international community
to plug an $18m shortfall in funding to fight Ebola.
"The total
that needs to be covered is $25.9m. We have so far received commitments
of $7.6m. We have a gap of $18.2m," the president said.
Eight
Chinese medical workers who treated patients with Ebola have been placed
in quarantine in Sierra Leone, but Beijing has not said whether they
were displaying symptoms of the disease.
In addition, 24 nurses
have been quarantined, health officials said, while a physician had
contracted Ebola but was responding well to treatment.
The nation's sole virologist, who was at the forefront of its battle against the epidemic, died from Ebola last month.
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