New Drugs and Vaccines Can’t Stop This Ebola Outbreak
But researchers are ramping up efforts in the hope of saving lives in the future.
By Molly Redden
MotherJones.com
Mon Aug. 18, 2014
With the death toll in the worst Ebola outbreak in history exceeding 1,000, pharmaceutical companies and health authorities are sprinting to develop new drugs and vaccines. On Monday, drug-maker GlaxoSmithKline announced that it would start clinical trials of an Ebola vaccine ahead of schedule. And on Tuesday, the World Health Organization ruled that the use of experimental drugs to treat Ebola patients is ethical so long as the patients give their consent. But for now, there are no proven drugs to treat Ebola, and experts doubt that any new drug or vaccine could beat back the current outbreak in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea.
“The drugs are not going to stop the outbreak, period,” says Robert Garry, a virology researcher at Tulane University. One problem, he says, is the meager supply of drugs and vaccines. ZMapp, an experimental drug, has already begun human trials. But Mapp Biopharmaceutical, the company developing ZMapp with the help of the US Army, did not expect to start human tests this early, and it has only about a dozen doses. It has already sent two of those doses to Liberia.
Any Ebola vaccine, meanwhile, could not help contain the spread of the disease unless it is administered to huge numbers of people. GlaxoSmithKline, which is working on a vaccine in concert with the National Institutes of Health, has produced just a few hundred doses intended for future clinical trials, the company told the New York Times. In the best case scenario, the vaccine will go to market sometime next year.
When a new drug or vaccine does become available, Garry says, medical workers in West Africa will face difficulties reaching people in need. Mistrust of doctors has already hampered aid efforts in some hard-hit regions. “And we’re talking about areas where there virtually is no infrastructure,” he adds.
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