Spain’s Health Ministry said it obtained ZMapp this weekend with company permission to treat Miguel Pajares, a 75-year-old priest evacuated from Liberia and placed in isolation Thursday at Madrid’s Carlos III Hospital.
“The medicine was imported from Geneva where there was one dose available in the context of an accord between the laboratory that developed the medicine, WHO and (Doctors Without Borders),” the ministry said, invoking a Spanish law permitting unauthorized medication for patients with life-threatening illnesses.
Spanish authorities refused to comment beyond the ministry’s statement, but Geneva University Hospital told The Associated Press it was involved in getting the drug to Madrid.
The evacuated American aid workers, Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, have been improving at Atlanta’s Emory University Hospital. They got the treatment after their international relief group Samaritan’s Purse asked Kentucky BioProcessing, which produces it for Mapp Biopharmaceutical.
The treatment mixes three antibodies engineered to recognize Ebola and bind to infected cells so the immune system can kill them.
A Sierra Leone official said they had not asked for the drug, but the other governments said they want any treatment that might help patients recover, despite the risks of unproven medicines.
“The alternative for not testing this is death, a certain death,” Liberia’s information minister, Lewis Brown, told The AP in an interview before the announcement.
Guinea said Monday it wants some, too.
“Guinean authorities would naturally be interested in having this medicine,” said Alhoussein Makanera Kake, spokesman for the government committee fighting Ebola.
In other Ebola developments Monday:
— An African nun who worked with the infected Spanish priest died from Ebola in Liberia, their Catholic aid group said.
— A nurse who treated Patrick Sawyer, the Liberian-American who flew into Nigeria and died last month, also died of Ebola, Nigerian health authorities said, raising the number of locally confirmed Ebola cases to 10. Nigeria is monitoring 177 contacts of Sawyer to contain the outbreak. The WHO has yet to confirm any Ebola cases in Nigeria.
— Ivory Coast, which shares borders with Liberia and Guinea, banned direct flights from the infected countries and said it would increase health inspections and enforcement of its borders, but stopped short of closing them entirely.
— George Weah, a Liberian former FIFA world player of the year, joined awareness efforts by recording a song titled “Ebola is real,” with proceeds going to the Liberian Health Ministry.
