Sierra Leone's Second Top Doctor Dies Of Ebola Virus
A second top doctor working to fight Ebola in Sierra Leone has died of the deadly virus, country authorities announced Wednesday.
Modupeh Cole, a top doctor working at a clinic in Freetown, is the second top physician in Sierra Leone to die of the virus. He reportedly contracted Ebola after treating a patient who at the time appeared to have a different sickness, but later tested positive for Ebola. Last month, Sierra Leone's other top Ebola doctor, Shek Umar Khan, passed away from the virus.
Cole was "instrumental in the fight against the Ebola virus," the country's Chief Medical Officer Brima Kargbo said in a statement Wednesday.
The death of Sierra Leone's two top physicians comes as a small batch of the experimental drug ZMapp arrive at an airport in Liberia Wednesday to treat those dying of the virus. The drug, which was previously only tested on monkeys, has had successful preliminary results after it was tested on two American aid workers last month.
Initially, there was an outrcry in West Africa because the experimental drug was being used to treat westerners, but was not being used to treat the nearly 1,000 Africans who have died of the disease since its outbreak began in March 2014.
The World Health Organization and the United Nations then released statements saying it would be ethical to give the experimental drug to the African population, even though it hadn't been thoroughly tested on humans. This allowance prompted two boxes of ZMapp to be delivered to Liberia's capital of Monrovia on Wednesday. The first batches of the drug will be given to two Liberian doctors currently suffering from the disease.
Liberia's Assistant Health Minister Tolbert Nyenswah said in a statement that the delivery of the experimental drugs are not necessarily a complete solution, adding that the drugs should be consumed by patients who have knowledge of the risk. "This is not the panacea to the problem. It is at the risk of the patient."
