A Liberian doctor who treated victims of an Ebola epidemic and then contracted the disease himself has died even though he was given the experimental drug ZMapp, Liberia's information minister said on Monday, according to The Associated Press.
Abraham Borbor's death could curb optimism about the drug that mounted last week when two United States. aid workers who caught Ebola in Liberia were declared free of the virus after receiving the same treatment at a hospital in the United States, the AP reported.
People in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia are desperate for a cure for the contagious hemorrhagic fever that has killed at least 1,427 people since March in the deadliest outbreak the world has seen, according to the AP.
Mapp Biopharmaceutical says it will take time to replenish its exhausted stocks of ZMapp and scientists say it is too early to confirm the value of the medication that has been tested on laboratory animals but not previously on humans, the AP reported.
The disease has reaped a grim toll on health care workers, often working long hours in tough conditions at low-tech facilities, often lacking adequate protective gear, according to the AP.
Nearly 100 have died, according to the World Health Organization, including doctor Sheik Umar Khan, who was considered a hero in his native Sierra Leone for leading the fight against Ebola, the AP reported.
Doctors at the Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) facility where he was treated agonized over the ethics of giving him ZMapp and the risk of a backlash if it was perceived to have killed him, but decided against it in the end, according to the AP.
Victims suffer vomiting, diarrhoea, internal and external bleeding in the final stages of the disease, leaving their bodies coated in the virus, the AP reported.
