The World Health Organization has welcomed the start of clinical trials for potential treatments for Ebola Bundibugyo disease in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, though it cautioned that any medicines are unlikely to be available for months.
Three testing sites have opened in eastern DRC’s Ituri province since the outbreak was declared a public health emergency on 15 May.
Patients enrolled at the sites will be monitored under controlled conditions to determine whether the treatments are effective, said Dr Vasee Moorthy, acting head of the WHO’s R&D Blueprint initiative.
“We are trying to ramp up the enrolment,” he said. “So, it depends on how many sites within the affected area are open for enrolment. Because they’re a clinical trial we have to have safe monitoring of the people that are enrolled in the trial. And that does take time to have more and more teams and more sites enrolling patients.”
Research into possible vaccines is also progressing, with a trial now under way in the UK and another due to begin in Canada within days.
The current outbreak is the largest ever recorded in the DRC.
