Spanish priest to be treated with experimental Ebola drug

A Spanish priest infected with Ebola will be treated with an
experimental drug that has been used on two Americans infected with
the deadly virus, the government said.

The drug called ZMapp arrived at Madrid's La Paz-Carlos III hospital
where the 75-year-old missionary was being treated in isolation, the
health ministry said in a statement late on Saturday.

Spain's drug safety agency allowed the "exceptional importation" of
ZMapp under a law that allows "the use of non-authorised medications
in cases where a patent's life is in danger and they can't be treated
satisfactorily with an authorised medication," it said.

The Roman Catholic priest, Miguel Pajares, was one of three people who
tested positive for Ebola at the Saint Joseph Hospital in the Liberian
capital Monrovia where he worked.

He was brought back to Spain on Thursday on a medically equipped
Spanish airforce plane, the first patient in the fast-spreading Ebola
outbreak to be evacuated to Europe for treatment.

Spanish health authorities said Thursday the priest was in a stable
condition. The hospital is not providing medical updates for the
missionary at his request.

The military flight also evacuated Spanish nun Juliana Bonoha Bohe,
65, who worked at the same hospital as Pajares in Liberia and who was
found not to have Ebola.

The Spanish charity Pajares worked for, the Hospitaller Brothers of
St. John of God, had asked Madrid to bring to Spain for treatment two
African missionaries infected with Ebola who also worked at the
hospital but the request was turned down.

One of those two missionaries, a Congolese nun, died on Saturday due
to Ebola, the charity said.
There is no proven treatment or cure for Ebola, which causes severe
fever and, in the worst cases, unstoppable bleeding. Some 55 percent
of cases in this outbreak have been fatal.

Two Americans infected with Ebola while treating patients in Liberia
have shown signs of improvement since being given Zmapp back in the
United States but health authorities say it is too early to tell if
the drug had anything to do with that.

ZMapp, a treatment made by private US company Mapp Pharmaceuticals, is
still in an extremely early phase of development and had only been
tested previously on monkeys.

The use of the medication has sparked an ethical controversy as
experts call for it to be made available to African nations.