Succor is on the way for Nigerian patients of Ebola as the World Health
Organisation (WHO) Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, yesterday approved that
experimental drugs for the virus could be tested on them.
This came as the National Council on Health at an emergency
meeting adopted a 14-point resolution on how to contain the Ebola Virus Disease
(EVD) in the country. The National Council on Health is the highest
policy-making body in the country’s health sector and it comprises the Minister
of Health as the Chairman, the Minister of State for Health, the Commissioners
for Health in the states and the Secretary of Health and Human Services in the
Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, as members. The Permanent Secretary, Federal
Ministry of Health is the Secretary of the Council. A WHO panel of medical
ethics experts ruled yesterday that it is ethical to offer unproven drugs or
vaccines to people infected or at risk in West Africa’s deadly Ebola outbreak,
but cautioned that supplies would be limited. The panel said any provision of
experimental Ebola medicines would require “informed consent, freedom of
choice, confidentiality, respect for the person, preservation of dignity and
involvement of the community. The drugs should also be properly tested in the
best possible clinical trials, it said. Nigeria and Liberia had requested
samples of an experimental drug, ZMapp that has shown some positive effects on
two United States aid workers but failed to save a Spanish priest.
Guardian Newspaper
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