Ottawa, August 13 (QNA) – Canada says it will donate up to 1,000 doses of an experimental Ebola vaccine to help battle the disease’s outbreak in West Africa.
It comes after the World Health Organization said it was ethical to use untested drugs on Ebola patients.
However, experts say supplies of both the vaccine and the experimental drug Zmapp are limited and it could take months to develop more supplies, according to the (BBC).
More than 1,000 people have been killed by the current outbreak.
Canada says between 800 and 1,000 doses of the vaccine, which has only been tested on animals, will be donated to the World Health Organization (WHO) for use in West Africa.
However, it will keep a small portion of the vaccine for research, and in case it is needed in Canada.
The current outbreak has infected people in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria.
On Tuesday, the WHO said that in light of scale of the outbreak and high number of deaths, it was “ethical to offer unproven interventions with as yet unknown efficacy and adverse effects, as potential treatment or prevention.”
Last week the WHO declared the Ebola outbreak was a global health emergency. (QNA)
AMA
QNA 0926 GMT 2014/08/13
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