Dr. Annick Antierens, who is coordinating the investigational partnerships for Doctors Without Borders, said two pharmaceutical drugs were chosen for the experiments — antivirals from Japan and the United States — along with the use of a “convalescent plasma,” which is blood taken from people who have survived Ebola and probably have useful anti-bodies.
Separate trials will be led by three different research partners and involve the U.N. World Health Organization and health officials in affected countries.
“If we’re going to find a treatment, we have to do it now — which is why we have to accelerate these trials,” said Peter Horby, the chief investigator for the trial led by Oxford University.
Oxford’s trial will test the U.S. antiviral drug Brincidofovir in Liberia.
France’s National Institute of Health and Medical Research will conduct a trial of the Japanese antiviral drug Favipiravir in Gueckedou, Guinea, and the Antwerp Institute of Tropical Medicine will test convalescent whole blood and plasma therapy in Conakry, Guinea.
Results from some of the trials are expected by February or March.
Human testing of a handful of experimental safety tests with drugs and vaccines for Ebola has begun on several continents. The current outbreak kills between 50 and 80 percent of those infected in West Africa, according to Doctors Without Borders.
Also Thursday, the European Union’s Ebola coordinator expressed concern that the number of cases is on the rise again in parts of Sierra Leone. On a visit to Freetown, its capital, Christos Stylianides pledged that the EU would do more.
“There are immediate needs that cannot wait,” he said. “Medical personnel are needed urgently on the ground. We are concentrating on this issue and this is one of the messages I am taking back to Europe.”
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Ahmed reported from Bamako, Mali. Associated Press writer John Heilprin in Geneva and Clarence Roy-Macaulay in Freetown, Sierra Leone contributed to this report.
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