It's already too late for millions: Experimental drugs may be key to stopping Ebola outbreak

The World Health Organization (WHO) has reported that thousands of doses of experimental Ebola vaccines might be available before the end of 2014, and could then be given to health workers and other high risk people.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - An assistant director-general at the WHO, Marie-Paule Kieny, said that there are currently no vaccines that have proven safe or effective in humans, so testing is a must to ensure they are not harmful.

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Recently, the Canadian government donated 800 vials of one experimental vaccine, though it is unclear how many doses that number holds. Kieny said that the doses would probably be about 1,500, and the NewLink Genetics Corp. is expected to produce thousands more in the coming months.

The U.S. company GlaxoSmithKline is expected to have 10,000 doses of another vaccine by the beginning of 2015, Kieny said.

"This will not be a mass vaccination campaign," she said.

Health workers will be given the vaccines as early as January of 2015, as part of a larger trial to test the vaccine's effectiveness.

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa, particularly the nations of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, have seen a death toll of around 2,900, with infections about 6,300.

While this alone is a horrendous toll, health officials worry that the outbreak could become ever worse.

Health experts with the Centers for Disease Control have said that the number of infected people could explode to 1.4 million by January, while WHO officials have warned that the Ebola epidemic could become endemic.

Health officials hope that these experimental drugs might be able to help bring the outbreak under control by then.

The WHO has begun using blood from Ebola survivors to help develop treatments, but say that further studies will have to be conducted to determine if they can actually help people with the disease.

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