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News > World

Congo Approves More Experimental Ebola Treatments as Cases Rise

  •  Congolese health worker administers Ebola vaccine to a boy who had contact with an Ebola sufferer in the village of Mangina in North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

    Congolese health worker administers Ebola vaccine to a boy who had contact with an Ebola sufferer in the village of Mangina in North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo. | Photo: Reuters

Published 22 August 2018
Opinion

Health authorities last week started administering the United States-developed mAb114 treatment to Ebola patients.

The Democratic Republic of Congo has approved four more experimental treatments against the deadly Ebola virus; the health ministry said as it raced to contain an outbreak in its violence-torn east.

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Health authorities last week started administering the United States-developed mAb114 treatment to Ebola patients, the first time such a procedure had been used against an active outbreak.

The health ministry said in a daily bulletin late on Tuesday that the ten patients who received mAb114 since Aug. 11 have experienced a "positive evolution," but the outbreak has continued to grow.

The four additional treatments approved by Congo's ethics committee are Remdesivir, made by Israel's Gilead Sciences; ZMapp, an intravenous treatment manufactured by San Diego's Mapp Pharmaceutical; Japanese drug Favipiravir; and one referred to as Regn3450 – 3471 – 3479.

Remdesivir was administered to its first patient in the town of Beni on Tuesday, who is doing well, the ministry said in its bulletin.

Six new cases and four new deaths have been confirmed from the hemorrhagic fever, which causes vomiting and severe diarrhea, the ministry said.

That brings the total number of deaths to 59 and confirmed cases to 75 since last month.

Congo, whose heavily forested interior makes its a natural home for Ebola, is at the forefront of a global campaign to combat the virus, which killed more than 11,000 people when it swept through West Africa from 2013-2016.

The Central African country has experienced ten Ebola outbreaks since the virus was discovered in northern Congo in 1976 - more than twice as many as any other country - and 33 people died in a flare-up in the northwest that ended last month.

In addition, a vaccine manufactured by Merck, which proved effective against the earlier outbreak in northwestern Congo, has been administered to 1,693 health workers and contacts of Ebola patients.

Insecurity in Congo's eastern borderlands with Uganda has continued to complicate the response, with some contacts of Ebola patients located in so-called "red-zones," which are off limits to emergency responders due to militia activity.

Instead, local health workers in those areas are monitoring the contacts, and no Ebola cases have yet been confirmed there.

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