From Bloomberg
Blood taken from the survivors of Ebola should be used to treat patients as a matter of priority as experts await results from safety trials on vaccines and drugs, the World Health Organization said.
Whole blood transfusions have already been used to treat some patients in West Africa, Marie-Paule Kieny, the WHO’s assistant director-general for health systems and innovation, said yesterday. The United Nations agency is helping governments in the affected countries to establish a system that can be reliably used to draw blood from survivors, prepare it and re-inject it safely into patients, she said.
The agency assessed a dozen drugs and vaccines in a two-day meeting, after a WHO ethics panel decided last month that unproven treatments could be used. While some of the experimental vaccines may finish safety trials within months, the blood of survivors, containing natural antibodies against the disease, is readily available in an outbreak in which 47 percent of those infected have survived.
“This has a good chance to work, and this is something that can be produced now from the affected countries,” Kieny said yesterday at a briefing in Geneva.
Written by /Read more at Bloomberg
