August 20, 2014

expert reaction to World View on the supply of experimental Ebola drugs

A report in the journal Nature discussed the difficulties in estimating the number of people affected by the recent outbreak of Ebola in West Africa, and also in providing them with treatment.

Prof Ian Jones, Professor of Virology at the University of Reading, said:

“Brady and colleagues have made a worthy attempt to put an accurate figure on the need for Ebola treatments, but it’s a process fraught with difficulty. Treatment requires diagnosis and prophylaxis requires a risk assessment but neither of these is currently functioning as it should.

“Triage is also omitted; animal studies to date show that early drug or vaccine treatment is key to high levels of survival so there would be little point in giving current treatments to those at the late stage of disease. That demand may be higher than first thought is probably correct, but the actual numbers are anyone’s guess.”

Prof Jonathan Ball, Professor of Molecular Virology at the University of Nottingham, said:

“This makes an important contribution to the debate about how and if Ebola treatments and vaccines can make an impact on the current Ebola outbreak; and the number of people that need to be treated, at least according to the models, is staggering.

“But it is important for us to define exactly what we want these interventions to achieve. Treatments have never successfully eradicated viral infection outbreaks but vaccines have.

“If the aim is to prevent the disease occurring in humans, then history tells us that our best bet is vaccination. But that isn’t going to happen tomorrow; and it won’t solve the current problem in West Africa.

“As for treatments, it is inconceivable to think that all individuals infected or at risk of infection will get treated – there’s simply not enough experimental drug to go round. Any treatment will have to be targeted, and if you target only those infected then the number of doses needed would be lower.

“I still maintain that the only way we are going to beat this ever-worsening outbreak is by education, public engagement, better healthcare provision and stringent infection control.”

‘Scale up the supply of experimental Ebola drugs’ by Oliver Brady published in Nature on Wednesday 20 August 2014.

All our previous output on this subject can be seen at this weblink:

http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/ebola-outbreak/

Declared interests

None declared