President Obama said Wednesday that it was too early to say whether an experimental drug can help stop the Ebola virus, and whether it should be made available to African nations.
“I think we’ve got to let the science guide us,” Obama said at a news conference to cap the first-ever U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit. “I don’t think all the information is in on whether this drug is helpful.”
The drug is being used to treat two Americans who contracted Ebola while working in Africa and have been flown back to the United States.
Obama said that Ebola can be “controlled and contained” if protocols are followed, and that is what U.S. health officials are now doing.
“We’re focusing on the public health approach right now,” Obama said. “But I will continue to seek information about what we’re learning with respect to these drugs going forward.”
Obama’s assertion has dashed the hopes of the federal government which was awaiting the response of the request it made yesterday to the United States Center for Disease Control for the unapproved Ebola drug, ZMapp, for the treatment of affected persons in Nigeria.
It could be recalled that the Ebola drug which Nigeria formerly requested for was administered on Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, two American aid workers who were gravely ill, as a result of infection with the deadly Ebola virus in Liberia.
Both aid workers had shown improvement after taking the drug by a San Diego drug company which had three doses of an experimental Ebola medicine that showed promise in monkeys but had never been tested in humans.
He has a right to exercise caution cos it’s the same Africans that will start insulting him for using Africans as Guinea pigs…. The two Americans are doctors and are fully aware of the implications of the trials on them….
Wait until you get Ebola then you will know if he is right or wrong