Ebola Update: More Experimental Treatments, Health Workers at Risk

The number of cases in Democratic Republic of Congo’s latest outbreak of the virus has now surpassed 100.

Written byCatherine Offord

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Health workers in Democratic Republic of Congo have begun giving patients two experimental treatments to tackle the latest outbreak of Ebola as the number of cases climbs above 100, Reuters reports. The first dose of Gilead Science’s antiviral drug Remdesivir was administered on Tuesday (August 21), while the monoclonal antibody treatment mAb114 was deployed nearly two weeks ago.

“As of 20 August 2018, a total of 102 confirmed and probable [Ebola virus disease] cases, including 59 deaths, have been reported,” the World Health Organization (WHO) writes in a situation report published yesterday (August 22). Besides mAb114, “The Ethics Committee in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has approved the use of four additional experimental therapeutics, namely: ZMapp, Remdesivir, Favipiravir, and Regn3450 - 3471 – 3479” to be used by Ebola treatment centers.

The latest outbreak was discovered at the beginning of August near Beni, a city in the eastern part ...

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Meet the Author

Catherine Offord
After undergraduate research with spiders at the University of Oxford and graduate research with ants at Princeton University, Catherine left arthropods and academia to become a science journalist. She has worked in various guises at The Scientist since 2016. As Senior Editor, she wrote articles for the online and print publications, and edited the magazine’s Notebook, Careers, and Bio Business sections. She reports on subjects ranging from cellular and molecular biology to research misconduct and science policy. Find more of her work at her website.
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