Africa: WHO to Convene Ethical Review of Experimental Treatment for Ebola

Forum 9 years ago

Africa: WHO to Convene Ethical Review of Experimental Treatment for Ebola

Early next week, WHO will convene a panel of medical
ethicists to explore the use of experimental treatment
in the ongoing Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Currently
there is no registered medicine or vaccine against the
virus, but there are several experimental options under
development.
The recent treatment of two health workers from
Samaritan’s Purse with experimental medicine has
raised questions about whether medicine that has
never been tested and shown to be safe in people
should be used in the outbreak and, given the
extremely limited amount of medicine available, if it is
used, who should receive it.
“We are in an unusual situation in this outbreak. We
have a disease with a high fatality rate without any
proven treatment or vaccine,” says Dr Marie-Paule
Kieny, Assistant Director-General at the World Health
Organization. "We need to ask the medical ethicists to
give us guidance on what the responsible thing to do
is.”
The gold standard for assessing new medicine involves
a series of trials in humans, starting small to make sure
the medicine is safe to use. Then, the studies are
expanded to more people to see how effective it is, and
how best to use it.
The guiding principle with use of any new medicine is
‘do no harm’. Safety is always the main concern.