WHO consults ethics experts on wider use of experimental Ebola drugs

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WHO consults ethics experts on wider use of experimental Ebola drugs

By Tom Miles and Kate Kelland GENEVA/LONDON (Reuters) - The use of an experimental drug on two U.S. charity workers with the deadly Ebola virus has prompted the World Health Organization (WHO) to consider the implications of making such treatments more widely available, it said on Wednesday. The Geneva-based agency, which is hosting a two-day Emergency Committee of experts to decide on the international response to the disease that has killed nearly 1,000 people in West Africa, said it would convene a meeting of medical ethics experts early next week. We have a disease with a high fatality rate without any proven treatment or vaccine," WHO Assistant Director-General Marie-Paule Kieny said in a statement. "We need to ask the medical ethicists to give us guidance on what the responsible thing to do is." Health experts and specialists on viruses and infectious diseases welcomed the WHO's decision to consider the problem, but warned it would not be easy.

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