IF ONE good thing comes out of the unfolding crisis in West Africa, where hundreds have fallen victim to the Ebola virus, it’s the hope that it will redouble efforts around the world to develop new treatments.
The outbreak is the deadliest to date. In Guinea nearly 300 people have died. Confirmed cases and deaths have also hit neighbouring Liberia and Sierra Leone. The World Health Organization listed a total of 759 cases and 467 deaths by the end of June. Health workers fear the disease is out of control.
Concerned by the march of the virus, aided by funeral rituals which involve physical contact with the dead and fearful family members hiding sick relatives, the WHO gathered health ministers from 11 countries in the region for talks on a coordinated response.
The unprecedented scale of the epidemic calls for unprecedented action and innovation to stop the death and suffering. Dying in isolation wards is neither attractive to patients nor their families. No wonder the relatives of some people infected in Sierra Leone snatched their kin and took them home to care for them.
So what hope of a medical advance soon? Ironically, the key driver for drug development is US interest in infectious diseases because of their potential use as bioweapons. After anthrax was mailed to news organisations and politicians in the US in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in 2001, hundreds of millions of dollars have been poured into research of this type.
So far no vaccine has been approved for Ebola; candidate drugs are years away from human use. But post-infection treatments intended to save lives are more advanced. They include TKM-Ebola, a drug being developed by Canadian firm Tekmira under a $140 million contract with the US Department of Defense. It targets genes vital to the virus to reduce its impact. The survival rate in monkeys given the drug was 100 per cent. In January, clinical trials began to evaluate safe dosage and side effects. In March, the US Food and Drug Administration fast-tracked development of TKM-Ebola.
Other hopeful approaches include the identification of antibodies against the Zaire strain of the virus, which is responsible for the current outbreak. Monkeys given cocktails of such antibodies survived infection.
To make the leap from lab to treatment, though, requires a lot of money. With the world watching events in Africa, more resources might follow. Public funding is the key. Since 1976, Ebola has infected less than 3000 people, so the commercial drive for drug development is low.
While the fact that drugs are on the horizon is no consolation for those hit by the current outbreak, its scale and an enduring fear of bioterrorism in the US might just mean next time is different.
This article appeared in print under the headline “Break Ebola’s stranglehold”
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