Ebola has been around since the 1970s, and although there were already some outbreaks in the past, they were not as deadly as the most recent one, reaching even other continents such as Europe and North America.
With more than 5,000 dead and over 14,000 confirmed cases, World Health Organization (WHO) and other members of the health care industry are desperate to find the right treatment. Unfortunately, none has so far shown some effectiveness.
WHO has actually been looking into more than 100 of these treatments. However, based on their announcement on Friday, November 14, it has yet to find one that is truly effective.
Some of the treatments that have been assessed included ZMapp, which is an experimental drug that became very popular when two of the U.S. health workers, Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, received it prior to their arrival in the United States. Another evaluated drug is lamivudine, an HIV drug.
Both of these drugs didn't show any significant effectiveness, and it's possible that the survival of the patients who received these medications may be due to other factors, such as their overall health condition, the degree of sickness they suffered at the time they were administered of the drugs, and the great care doctors had given them. It's also possible that a combination of these medications may have led to their recovery. Many of these patients received combinations composed of two to four different medications.
WHO also mentions that some of the touted treatments especially in West Africa don't work at all, such as selenium and silver. There are also others that consider coffee such as Nescafe and tea to be a possible Ebola treatment, which WHO begs to disagree.
In the meantime, Doctors without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres) is scheduled to begin some Ebola treatment trials in Guinea and Liberia, in partnership with several companies. The organization will assess the effectiveness of drugs such as brincidofovir and favipiravir. They also hope to determine the effectiveness of blood plasma therapy.