Modern Healthcare reported: “The company that developed an experimental drug used against the Ebola virus said it has exhausted its supply after shipping doses to Africa to treat two Liberian doctors.
Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf announced on her Executive Mansion website Tuesday that the government had gotten approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and San Diego-based drugmaker Mapp Biopharmaceuticals for use of ZMapp. The Liberian doctors will be the first African recipients of the experimental drug.
“The FDA’s approval is to allow the drugmaker to send the experimental drug to the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare only for use on the two doctors,” according to the statement. “The drugs should be in the country within the next 48 hours.”
The U.S. government helped the Liberian government get in touch with Mapp Biopharmaceuticals to procure the drug. “Since the drug was shipped for use outside the U.S., appropriate export procedures had to be followed,” an HHS spokesperson said in an e-mail.
Questions loom about Mapp’s capability to produce enough of the drug to help a significant number of the people affected by the Ebola outbreak, which has killed more than 1,000 people as of Monday in Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leona and Nigeria, according to the World Health Organization.
In a statement posted on its website Tuesday, Mapp said it has exhausted its available supply of ZMapp and that it had provided it at no cost.
The company declined to answer additional questions regarding any plans to mass produce ZMapp.”
Click here to read the full MHC article “Ebola drug supply exhausted after shipments to Africa, company says” by Steven Ross Johnson.
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Doctor, Did You Wash Your Hands? ™ provides information to consumers on understanding, managing and navigating health care options.
Jonathan M. Metsch, Dr.P.H., is Clinical Professor, Preventive Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; and Adjunct Professor, Baruch College ( C.U.N.Y.), Rutgers School of Public Health, and Rutgers School of Public Affairs and Administration.
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