AlQa'dah 9, 1435, Sep 4, 2014, SPA -- The U.N. health agency Thursday called for pharmaceutical companies and regulatory agencies to work together to accelerate the development of safe and efficient drugs and vaccines against Ebola. Ten experimental treatments, eight drugs and "two promising candidate vaccines," have shown potential against the virus but remain under investigation, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a document distributed at the start of a two-day meeting in Geneva. The treatments include the antibody drug ZMapp made by U.S.-based Mapp Biopharmaceutical, which has been given to several Ebola patients for "compassionate care" but whose clinical effectiveness is "still uncertain," the document said. "Efforts to scale up production (of ZMapp) may yield increased supplies of potentially a few hundred doses by the end of 2014," WHO said. Evidence of the effectiveness of the medicines and vaccines is "suggestive but not based on solid scientific data from clinical trials," the agency said. Existing supplies of all experimental medicines are extremely limited or exhausted. "Accelerating the development of experimental/not approved Ebola Virus Disease therapies and vaccines require a concerted effort by product developers and regulatory agencies, in cooperation with the WHO," the U.N. agency's document said. Decisions on which products go into accelerated development should be transparent and involve the West African countries affected by the epidemic, the document said. "While there is an urgent need for product to be used on a compassionate basis, the ultimate goal should be product approval so that countries affected by Ebola Virus Disease have products which have been demonstrated safe and effective at their disposal," WHO said.
