1. I have watched a lot of comments on NL concerning the above. I believe some comments are educating and helpful. I must also say that I find many comments absolutely ridiculous.
2. While I cannot lay claim to being an expert, besides my course in anatomy, Biodiversity, Ecology and other stuffs I can't remember in my undergrad days and well over 15years ago (and I've crossed from that to IT and now to Business Development and Strategy, but still have keen interest in Health and Medical stuffs) I believe, we owe ourselves as a collective group the responsibility to be properly educated, not hearsay, not unverified information, not stupid and ridiculous lies and assertions, and junks
3. I must also lay out (and pardon me), that I find all the proponents of "American and West wants to suppress us in Africa" and their claim laughable, ignorant and at best lazy mentality
4. Let critically review some the issues here. It is my hope that we'll mostly be educated.......

So Let's Start

Let's cut the chase and go straight to point

Facts about ZMAPP- Please lets dig out what we can find and put on this page

Two American missionary workers infected with the deadly Ebola virus were given an experimental drug that seems to have saved their lives.

Dr. Kent Brantly (pictured) was given the medication, ZMapp, shortly after telling his doctors he thought he would die, according to a source familiar with his case. Within an hour, doctors say his symptoms — labored breathing and a widespread rash — dramatically improved. Nancy Writebol, another missionary working with Samaritan’s Purse, received two doses of the medication and has also shown significant improvement, sources say.

As there is no proven treatment and no vaccine for Ebola, this experimental drug is raising lots of questions.

1. Who makes the drug?

The drug was developed by the biotech firm Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc., which is based in San Diego. The company was founded in 2003 “to develop novel pharmaceuticals for the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases, focusing on unmet needs in global health and biodefense,” according to its website.

Mapp Biopharmaceutical has been working with the National Institutes of Health and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, an arm of the military responsible for weapons of mass destruction, to develop an Ebola treatment for several years.

2. Are there other experimental Ebola drugs out there?

Yes. In March, the NIH awarded a five-year $28 million grant to establish a collaboration between researchers from 15 institutions who were working to fight Ebola.

“A whole menu of antibodies have been identified as potentially therapeutic, and researchers are eager to figure out which combinations are most effective and why,” a news release about the grant said.

Tekmira, a Vancouver-based company that has a $140 million contract with the U.S. Department of Defense to develop an Ebola drug, began Phase 1 trials with its drug in January. But the FDA recently halted the trial, asking for more information.

At least one potential Ebola vaccine has been tested in healthy human volunteers, according to Thomas Geisbert, a leading researcher at the University of Texas Medical Branch. And last week, the NIH announced a safety trial of another Ebola vaccine will start as early as September.

3. How does ZMapp work?

Antibodies are proteins used by the immune system to mark and destroy foreign, or harmful, cells. A monoclonal antibody is similar, except it’s engineered in a lab so it will attach to specific parts of a dangerous cell, according to the Mayo Clinic, mimicking your immune system’s natural response. Monoclonal antibodies are used to treat many different types of conditions.

This medicine is a three-mouse monoclonal antibody, meaning that mice were exposed to fragments of the Ebola virus and then the antibodies generated within the mice’s blood were harvested to create the medicine.

4. Why did American missionary workers get the drug?

Many have asked why these two workers received the experimental drug when so many — around 1,600 — others in West Africa also have the virus.

The World Health Organization says it was not involved in the decision to treat Brantly and Writebol. Both patients had to give consent to receive the drug, knowing it had never been tested in humans before.

The process by which the medication was made available to the American patients may have fallen under the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s “compassionate use” regulation, which allows access to investigational drugs outside clinical trials

5. Did doctors know it would work?

No. The drug had shown promise in primates, but even in those experiments, just eight monkeys received the treatment. In any case, the human immune system can react differently than primates’, which is why drugs are required to undergo human clinical trials before being approved by government agencies for widespread use.

The two Americans’ cases will be studied further to determine how the drug worked with their immune systems.

6. Will the drug be made available to other Ebola patients?

It’s unclear. Doctors “cannot start using untested drugs in the middle of an outbreak, for various reasons,” World Health Organization spokesman Gregory Hartl said.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, says scientists have to be careful about assuming this drug will work in other patients as it appears to have worked in Brantly.

“Having worked with administering antibodies for people for a really long time, that would be distinctly unusual,” he told CNN. “As we all know in medicine … you have to withhold judgment.”

7. Does the company have more vials of the drug?

The company has very few doses ready for patient use, Fauci told CNN. “Apparently the company is trying to scale up, (but) it’s not easy to scale up to very large number of doses.”

Thank you for opening this thread.First when ebola hit Africa in the 70s,and it died down since,my gut instinct told me that they must have found the cure/vaccine for it.It shouldnt be a surprise that none has been publicised ever since.Not until one man was asked to disperse the virus in Africa,s most populous nation!
The MD of Nano silver professed that it works,so lets make us of it if US refuse to give Nigeria

8. Who paid for the drug and how much did it cost?

We don’t know. Samaritan’s Purse covered the cost of Brantly and Writebol’s evacuations but did not pay for the drug, according to a spokesman.

When a patient gets an experimental drug, the drug company can donate the product under compassionate use. Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc. might have done that in this case.

Health insurance companies typically do not pick up the tab for treatments that have not been approved by the FDA. But they would usually cover the cost of any doctor fees associated with giving the drug and any costs associated with monitoring how the drug is working.

9. Would this drug stop the Ebola epidemic?

If it were widely available, it certainly couldn’t hurt. An effective Ebola drug could help doctors treat the deadly virus, which is killing about 60% of the people infected in West Africa. But a vaccine would be a much more effective tool in stopping this, and future, epidemics.

Vaccines are given to healthy people to prevent them from ever becoming infected. One challenge with Ebola, experts say, is that companies don’t believe they could make much money from developing a vaccine, so few companies show interest.

cardoso111: Thank you for opening this thread.First when ebola hit Africa in the 70s,and it died down since,my gut instinct told me that they must have found the cure/vaccine for it.It shouldnt be a surprise that none has been publicised ever since.Not until one man was asked to disperse the virus in Africa,s most populous nation!
The MD of Nano silver professed that it works,so lets make us of it if US refuse to give Nigeria

My brother,

to the best of my knowledge, you don't just hit ground running with any drug simply based on the profession of the MD of the company, even regardless of the passion displayed by the MD when asserting the efficacy of the drug. Lest we reduce medicine to peddling (like done in local public transport), there are certified ways and procedural steps to get drugs safe and fit for consumption.

Secondly, you don't also try drugs use in the middle of outbreak of diseases. You can't justify with desperation of the dying patient because the said patient lacks knowledge of the components and efficacy, and also will be in a good position to make rational judgment. Cases when these were done had come out with consequences

The reason US refuses/holding back in giving out ZMAPP is obvious and logical as elucidated in points 5 & 6. The Meningitis case in Kano comes to mind and the cost to litigation, insurance and image is so immense that institution are careful to subject drugs to proper trials and disclosure of its side effects before it's commercialization and mass production. Even in cases where side effects where later discovered, authorities do get the companies to withdraw it.

Check below some information on the MD of Nano Silver

The controversial woman behind Nano Silver, the new ‘Ebola drug’ being tried in Nigeria

By every description, Dr. Rima Laibow is controversial and combative.

The American doctor ─ who said she has a cure for the Ebola virus disease and whose treatment is now made available to Nigeria by an unnamed donor ─ has been campaigning against the “conspiracy” of conventional drug makers.

You guessed right ─ she is into “natural solutions”, or what is better known as alternative medicine.

She sells things like “hemp oil” and “organic chocolate” as cure for illnesses.

In fact, Nano Silver, which arrived Nigeria on Thursday, is not classified as a drug, because it is not so certified by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ─ the American equivalent of NAFDAC.

Rather, Nano Silver is classified as a “supplement”. She calls it “drug-free medicine”.

‘The Power of Ten’

Recently, she started a campaign of “10 PPM” to make Nano Silver available, saying “no one need die from Ebola: You and your friends can stop it”.

Under the scheme, you are supposed to “make the pledge of 10″ ─ to get the information about Nano Silver across to 10 people.

This is how it works, according to her.

Step 1: Secure the protocol for the use of Nano Silver 10 PPM by going to her website and entering your email address.

Step 2: Calculate how much Nano Silver 10 PPM you need and make sure you have enough on hand.

Step 3: Take the Pledge for 10. Make yourself a promise that you will send out this information on social media and by email, in your club’s website, your PTA or whatever to make sure that at least 10 other people are protected in the same way.

“Let’s do the math,” she says. “If 10,000 people protect themselves and enlist 10 each to do the same, we have a hundred thousand who will not die. Then when they share the protection information with enough people that 10 react to each one, we have a million people. Ten of their friends and we have 10 million. One more multiplication and we have 100 million people, 1/3 of the population of the United States.”

A bit complicated, it seems, but an unnamed Nigerian has taken the offer and the solution to the Ebola outbreak may be here with us.

website Rima

Nano Silver

The Nano Silver, according to Laibow, will work where vaccines do not exist or fail and are effective even when the immune system is impaired, such as in AIDS.

“While there are some suggestions of mild risks to the environment, our research shows that they are unfounded and often associated with conflicts of interest since the widespread use and acceptance of Nano Silver directly threatens both the powerful vaccine and antibiotic industries,” she said in a recent open letter to four African presidents.

She lists some of the attributes of Nano Silver as follows:
◾It is widely used around the world for its anti-microbial characteristics and is, in fact, approved by the United States FDA as a surface cleaner for hospitals, food service and other health-sensitive areas because of its notable efficacy and non-toxic profile.
◾Sufficient short term protection for an individual outbreak cluster is provided by the use of Nano Silver that an epidemic can be effectively prevented even after infection clusters have been established.
◾Therapy can be started after infection, and normal immune function, including GI flora, is left intact to assist in recovery and prevent opportunistic co-infection.
◾It is stable at room temperature.
◾It offers a potentially beneficial therapy against virtually all types of viruses, bacteria and other pathogens
◾It is self-sterilising, reducing its cost and increasing its usefulness in challenging circumstances.
◾It is a pro-immunity nutrient.

1. For me, Institutions run by conventional medicine has never looked favourably to alternative medicine. Nano silver is from the alternative medicine source, hence the controversy.

2. I want to hazard a guess that Nano Silver has not gone through the checks and certifications with the FDA in the US, hence the approach to viral dissemination via conventional and social media.

3. It would have been a "Professional blunder" if the minister had not recanted his initial statement on Nano silver.

4. For me, Is Nano Silver the solution to Ebola? May be yes, may be no. But the reality is that in the current management and quest to eradicate Ebola, which his managed by the conventional medicine institutions, Nano Silver will not be used.

5. Options for the use of Nano Silver will be restricted to those who will seek private treatment, the cases of Dr. Abalaka and Prof. Orji etc