A Spanish priest infected with Ebola will be
treated with an experimental drug that has
been used on two Americans infected with
the deadly virus, the government said.
vaccine-Ebola
The drug called ZMapp arrived at Madrid’s
La Paz-Carlos III hospital where the 75-
year-old missionary was being treated in
isolation, the health ministry said in a
statement late on Saturday.
Spain’s drug safety agency allowed the
“exceptional importation” of ZMapp under
a law that allows “the use of non-
authorised medications in cases where a
patent’s life is in danger and they can’t be
treated satisfactorily with an authorised
medication,” it said.
The Roman Catholic priest, Miguel Pajares,
was one of three people who tested
positive for Ebola at the Saint Joseph
Hospital in the Liberian capital Monrovia
where he worked.
He was brought back to Spain on Thursday
on a medically equipped Spanish airforce
plane, the first patient in the fast-spreading
Ebola outbreak to be evacuated to Europe
for treatment.
Spanish health authorities said Thursday
the priest was in a stable condition. The
hospital is not providing medical updates
for the missionary at his request.
The military flight also evacuated Spanish
nun Juliana Bonoha Bohe, 65, who worked
at the same hospital as Pajares in Liberia
and who was found not to have Ebola.
The Spanish charity Pajares worked for, the
Hospitaller Brothers of St. John of God, had
asked Madrid to bring to Spain for
treatment two African missionaries
infected with Ebola who also worked at the
hospital but the request was turned down.
One of those two missionaries, a Congolese
nun, died on Saturday due to Ebola, the
charity said.
There is no proven treatment or cure for
Ebola, which causes severe fever and, in the
worst cases, unstoppable bleeding. Some
55 percent of cases in this outbreak have
been fatal.
Two Americans infected with Ebola while
treating patients in Liberia have shown
signs of improvement since being given
Zmapp back in the United States but health
authorities say it is too early to tell if the
drug had anything to do with that.
ZMapp, a treatment made by private US
company Mapp Pharmaceuticals, is still in
an extremely early phase of development
and had only been tested previously on
monkeys.
The use of the medication has sparked an
ethical controversy as experts call for it to
be made available to African nations.