West African countries anxiously await experimental Ebola drugs

Up to 1,000 doses of an experimental Ebola vaccine are on their way to west Africa as the world scrambled to halt the spread of the virus which claimed dozens more victims this week.

The Canadian government said it would send doses of a vaccine called VSV-EBOV which has shown promise in animal research, but never been tested in humans.

Hard-hit nations were also anxiously awaiting a barely-tested drug from the US called ZMapp which is expected to arrive within 48 hours as they hope to save hundreds infected by the tropical disease.

The death toll in the worst-ever epidemic of Ebola since its discovery four decades ago climbed to 1,069 yesterday, according to the World Health Organisation which said 56 had died in two days.

Nearly 2,000 people have now been infected.

The disease has hit doctors hard in the ill-equipped and fragile health systems of the worst-hit west African nations, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Liberia is scrambling to save two infected doctors and is hoping that the ZMapp serum, which has shown positive early results, arrives in time.

The presidency said on Tuesday it had received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration for the use of the drug.

Sierra Leone's health ministry spokesman Sidi Yahya Tunis told AFP the country had officially requested a shipment of the serum as the nation lost its second top doctor to the virus.

The death of Modupeh Cole, a senior physician in the Sierra Leonean capital Freetown, came just a fortnight after the country's only virologist and leading Ebola expert, Umar Khan, died of the tropical disease.

There is currently no available cure or vaccine for Ebola, which the WHO has declared a global public health emergency, and the use of experimental drugs has stoked a fierce debate.

The WHO declared Tuesday it was ethical to try largely untested treatments "in the special circumstances of this Ebola outbreak".

Nigeria has also had an outbreak of Ebola, and three people have died from the virus in the megacity of Lagos.

Meanwhile the company behind the ZMapp drug said it had sent all its available supplies to the region following an outcry over the fact it had so far only been used on Westerners, but supplies are extremely limited.

Its effectiveness is also far from proven, having only previously been tested on monkeys.

It appears to have had a positive effect on two US aid workers infected in Liberia, but an elderly Spanish priest also infected in the country, died in a Madrid hospital Tuesday despite being treated with ZMapp.

As west African countries waited for help from afar, the international community took further measures yesterday to prevent the spread of the virus.

Germany called on its nationals to leave Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, although it said it was keeping its embassies open.

In Riyadh, representatives of the Gulf monarchies met to discuss ways to guard against the epidemic ahead of the the arrival of millions of Muslims from around the world for the the annual pilgrimage to Mecca in early October.