Thursday, October 2, 2014

U.S. Will Increase Production of the Ebola Drug ZMapp, but May Not Meet Demand


Proteins glowing under ultraviolet light on a type of plant used to produce the drug ZMapp.

Federal officials are planning to sharply increase production of ZMapp, which is viewed by many experts as the most promising experimental drug for treating people infected with Ebola in West Africa.
The Department of Health and Human Services is in advanced discussions to enlist Caliber Biotherapeutics, a Texas company that can produce the drug in millions of tobacco plants, according to federal officials and pharmaceutical industry executives.
Federal officials, along with two of the world’s biggest charities — the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and theWellcome Trust — are also looking at arranging for production of ZMapp in animal cells, the more conventional method used by the biotechnology industry. Although that would take longer, it would allow for greater output by tapping into the biotechnology industry’s huge production capacity. ...
Despite the new efforts, supplies of the drug are expected to be limited to hundreds or thousands of treatment courses by early next year, which would not be nearly enough if the epidemic continues to spiral out of control.
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A Hospital From Hell, in a City Swamped by Ebola

MAKENI, Sierra Leone — “Where’s the corpse?” the burial-team worker shouted, kicking open the door of the isolation ward at the government hospital here. The body was right in front of him, a solidly built young man sprawled out on the floor all night, his right hand twisted in an awkward clench.
The other patients, normally padlocked inside, were too sick to look up as the body was hauled away. Nurses, some not wearing gloves and others in street clothes, clustered by the door as pools of the patients’ bodily fluids spread to the threshold. A worker kicked another man on the floor to see if he was still alive. The man’s foot moved and the team kept going. It was 1:30 in the afternoon.
In the next ward, a 4-year-old girl lay on the floor in urine, motionless, bleeding from her mouth, her eyes open. A corpse lay in the corner — a young woman, legs akimbo, who had died overnight. A small child stood on a cot watching as the team took the body away, stepping around a little boy lying immobile next to black buckets of vomit. They sprayed the body, and the little girl on the floor, with chlorine as they left.
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