Ebola: Use Survivors’ Blood To Treat Patients – WHO
Workers from Doctors Without Borders prepare isolation and treatment areas for their Ebola virus operations in Gueckedou, Guinea. (Photo Credit: Kjell Gunnar Beraas/MSF/AP)
The blood of patients who recover from Ebola should be used to treat others, the World Health Organization has announced.
West Africa is facing the largest Ebola outbreak in history and more than 2,000 people have died.
A global group of experts have been meeting to assess the experimental therapies that could contain Ebola.
The WHO also announced that Ebola vaccines could be used on the frontline by November.
Blood medicine People produce antibodies in the blood in an attempt to fight off an Ebola infection.
In theory, those antibodies can be transferred from a survivor into a sick patient to give their immune system a boost.
However, large scale data on the effectiveness of the therapy is lacking.
Studies on the 1995 outbreak of Ebola in Democratic Republic of Congoshowed seven out of
eight people survived after being given the therapy.
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