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| Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol,seems to have reacted positively to the Serum cocktail in fight against Ebola virus. |
two Americans it was tested on.
Leaders at Samaritan’s Purse, a North Carolina-based Christian humanitarian group, asked officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention whether any treatment existed — tested or untested — that might help save the lives of Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, both of whom had contracted Ebola while helping patients in Liberia.
The CDC put the group in touch with National Institutes of Health workers in West Africa, where an employee knew about promising research the U.S. government had funded on a serum that had been tested only in monkeys.
“Our staff in Liberia knew about the research and flagged it for the religious groups,” said Anthony Fauci, director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Within days, doses of the unproven treatment had made their way in frozen vials across the ocean and were administered to Brantly and Writebol.
“This so-called experimental serum is a cocktail of antibodies that have the capability of blocking the virus,” Fauci said, adding: “The physicians in charge of the patients’ care made a risk-benefit decision. The risk was less than the potential benefit.”
While it is too early to say whether the treatment saved the lives of the two missionaries or slowed the disease’s progression enough to allow them to return to the United States for care, some reports have suggested that Brantly and Writebol improved after getting the serum.
Both Samaritan’s Purse and CDC Director Tom Frieden have described Brantly’s condition as “improving.”
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