EbolaThree infected Liberian health workers receive rare Ebola serum

Three Liberian health care workers who have been infected with the Ebola virus while treating patients, have on Friday received a scarce experimental serum – Zmapp — at a hospital outside the national capital, Monrovia, the Liberian capital.

This is the same serum given to two American workers, Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, who contracted Ebola while working at ELWA Hospital in Monrovia. Brantly and Writebol were evacuated to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, where they have been showing promising signs of recovering from the disease.

A third patient who has received ZMapp, Miguel Pajares, a Spanish missionary, has died.

The New York Times reports that ZMapp, a mix of monoclonal antibodies, has been tested in animals, but has not been studied for safety or effectiveness in humans.

Mapp Biopharmaceutical of San Diego, which provided the drug, said the “available supply of ZMapp has been exhausted.”

Tolbert G. Nyenswah, Liberia’s assistant minister of health and social welfare, said that if the treatment works, “and we can save the doctors here, especially those senior medical doctors that are infected with the virus, then Liberia can be a place to do a mass trial with the drugs.”

Mapp Biopharmaceutical provided the doses to the six patients at no cost, according to an information sheet on the company’s Web site.