The first patient to be diagnosed with Ebola in the United States is not receiving any experimental drugs despite being in critical condition at a Dallas hospital, officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Sunday. Over 3, 400 people in Africa have died since the outbreak of the deadly disease in February.
Thomas Eric Duncan contracted the disease in Liberia, the center of the Ebola outbreak, and began to show symptoms after arriving in Texas two weeks ago, causing immediate panic that he might have infected another 50 individuals, with ten believed to be at "high risk" for exposure, health officials said.
Six experimental medications can be used to treat patients suffering from Ebola, according to ABC News.
ZMapp, an experimental medicine given to two other U.S. Ebola patients, has apparently run out, Huffington Post reported. Hence, the patient is not receiving the already small supply of ZMapp because it is "all gone" and is "not going to be available anytime soon," Dr. Tom Frieden, director of CDC, said during a briefing with reporters on Sunday.
Experimental treatments like ZMapp have not yet been proven to work in humans, but they have shown promise in animal studies, according to Frieden.
A second experimental option, a drug produced by Canada's Tekmira Pharmaceuticals Corp, is available for Duncan, but it "can be difficult to use and can make someone sicker initially," Frieden said, adding that Duncan is only receiving supportive care for now, RT reported.
It will eventually be up to Duncan, his family, and his treating physician on whether they plan to use a treatment which could possibly worsen his condition. But nonetheless, the Texas patient will have "access" to the medicine.
"As far as we understand, experimental medicine is not being used," Frieden added. "It's really up to his treating physicians, himself, his family what treatment to take."
However, Duncan's family "has expressed concern that he has not received experimental medication, which was used to treat three Americans infected with Ebola," including Dr. Kent Brantly, Nancy Writebol, and Dr. Rick Sacra, according to ABC News,
"I don't understand why he is not getting the ZMapp," Joe Weeks, who lives with Duncan's sister Mai, told ABC News.
Meanwhile, Texas Presbyterian Hospital is currently treating Duncan in an isolation unit.
The Ebola outbreak started in Guinea's remote southeast in February and has since spread across the region. Since it was first recorded in 1976 in what is now Democratic Republic of Congo, more than 3,000 people have died in the outbreak from more than 4,200 infections in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Nigeria.
Symptoms of the highly infectious disease are diarrhea, vomiting and internal and external bleeding.
