The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced that trials have begun on a potential treatment for the virus variant currently behind the deadly Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Thursday that the first case had been registered in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
According to WHO, more than 1,400 infections and 438 deaths have been confirmed in Congo alone.
There is currently no approved vaccine or treatment for the highly contagious Bundibugyo virus variant.
The current trial is sponsored by WHO and is a collaboration between scientists from the Institut National de Recherche Biomédicale in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Belgium, and the University of Oxford in the UK.
Director-General Tedros met with reporters at the WHO headquarters in Geneva that day and said, “Clinical trials for two treatments have begun with the registration of the first patient.”
“People are recovering from this disease even though there are no approved treatments, but of course more lives can be saved with the safe and effective treatments in our toolkit,” the WHO director-general said.
