A man's temperature is read before he is allowed into a business center as fear of the deadly Ebola virus spreads through the city of Monrovia, Liberia
The company that manufactures an experimental Ebola drug said Monday it had sent the last of the medication to a West African country after receiving a request last week.
"The available supply of ZMapp is exhausted," Mapp Biopharmaceutical of San Diego said in a statement, adding that it provided the drug at no cost.
Mapp's disclosure comes amid growing sensitivity over whether West Africans have access to a drug that has been given to some Westerners. But it also underscores the fact that ZMapp and other experimental drugs are in such short supply that the overwhelming number of Ebola victims have no hope of receiving them.
Mapp's statement said the recipients "include medical doctors in two West African countries," as well as two U.S. missionaries who received the drug in recent weeks. It is not clear what effect the drug is having.
A statement from the office of Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf on Monday said the Obama administration and U.S. regulators approved a request from the country Friday for doses of the drug to treat Liberian doctors. The release also said Liberia expects to receive "additional doses" of the drug from the World Health Organization later this week, also to aid Ebola-stricken doctors.
Another Western patient was identified early Monday when Spain announced that it had obtained ZMapp to treat a 75-year-old priest who contracted the infection in Liberia. It credited two international health organizations - the WHO and Doctors Without Borders - with helping to secure the medication. But the two groups, which are working to contain the Ebola outbreak, said they had no roles in obtaining the medicine for the priest, Miguel Pajares.
Mapp and government authorities have said that very few doses of the medication exist. But that has not quelled a rising debate over whether ZMapp and other untested drugs should be used in West Africa, where Ebola had killed 961 people and sickened 1,779 as of last week.
Marcel Guilavogui, a pharmacist in Conakry, Guinea, expressed frustration in an interview with the Associated Press: "There's no reason to try this medicine on sick white people and to ignore blacks. We understand that it's a drug that's being tested for the first time and that could have negative side effects. But we have to try it in blacks, too."
Another Western patient was identified early Monday when Spain announced that it had obtained ZMapp to treat a 75-year-old priest who contracted the infection in Liberia. It credited two international health organizations - the WHO and Doctors Without Borders - with helping to secure the medication. But the two groups, which are working to contain the Ebola outbreak, said they had no roles in obtaining the medicine for the priest, Miguel Pajares.
Mapp and government authorities have said that very few doses of the medication exist. But that has not quelled a rising debate over whether ZMapp and other untested drugs should be used in West Africa, where Ebola had killed 961 people and sickened 1,779 as of last week.
Marcel Guilavogui, a pharmacist in Conakry, Guinea, expressed frustration in an interview with the Associated Press: "There's no reason to try this medicine on sick white people and to ignore blacks. We understand that it's a drug that's being tested for the first time and that could have negative side effects. But we have to try it in blacks, too."
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