DRC approves experimental treatments

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.

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

The health ministry said in a daily bulletin late on Tuesday that the 10 patients who had received mAb114 since August 11 had experienced a “positive evolution”, but the outbreak had 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 made by San Diego’s Mapp Pharmaceutical; Japanese drug Favipiravir; and one referred to as Regn3450-34713479.

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

Six new cases and four new deaths had been confirmed, 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 campaign to combat the virus.

The Central African country has experienced 10 Ebola outbreaks since the virus was discovered in northern DRC in 1976 – more than twice as many as any other country – and 33 people died in a flare-up in the north-west that ended last month.

In addition, a vaccine manufactured by Merck, which proved effective against the earlier outbreak in north-western 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.