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CNN reports that Dr. Gobee Logan had given the drug, lamivudine, to 15 Ebola patients, and all but two survived. That's a 7% mortality rate. Across West Africa, the virus has killed 70% of its victims.
Outside Logan's Ebola center in Tubmanburg, four of his recovering patients walk the grounds, always staying inside the fence that separates the Ebola patients from everyone else.


"My stomach was hurting; I was feeling weak; I was vomiting," Elizabeth Kundu, 23, says of her
bout with the virus. "They gave me medicine, and I'm feeling fine. We take it, and we can eat -- we're feeling fine in our bodies."

Kundu and the other 12 patients who took the lamivudine and survived, received the drug in the first five days or so of their illness. The two patients who died received it between days five and eight.

"I'm sure that when [patients] present early, this medicine can help," Logan said. "I've proven it right in my center."
Logan is mindful that lamivudine can cause liver and other problems, but he says it's worth the risk since Ebola is so deadly. He also knows American researchers will say only a real study can prove effectiveness. That would involve taking a much larger patient population and giving half of them lamivudine and the other half a placebo.

"Our people are dying and you're taking about studies?" he said. "It's a matter of doing all that I can do as a doctor to save some people's lives."
Logan said he got the idea to try lamivudine when he read in scientific journals that HIV and Ebola replicate inside the body in much the same way.

WATCH THE VIDEO HERE....

Well, it is all interesting. Lamivudine is also used to treat chronic hepatitis due to hepatitis B virus.

However, for it to be regarded as a cure....studies do have to be done.Especially a Randomized controlled trial One of course has to take into consideration the ethics of doing a large scale RCT in patients with Ebola.....do you give some placebo, and some drugs.?

One other thing...it is known that some Ebola patients survive because of their immune response. It would be interesting to note the immune response of the survivors vs those who passed on...

All in all, a good idea....and this doc commenting HOPES it works. But...there is a reason why we do studies....it is to really make sure the chemical being tested works.

When you're plagued with a life threatening disease with no cure, such experimental therapy should not be ruled out. They should have tried it much earlier.

No time for all these trials. Some people can carry out the trials, but Life must be saved.