Ebola-Black Market In Blood Serum Emerge

A new trend has emerged in Ebola ravaged West Africa as Bloomberg reports that a black market for treatment of the virus derived from the blood survivors. This is according to the World Health Organization, which earlier gave indication that this could be possible.

The WHO will work with governments to wipe out the illicit trade in convalescent serum, according to the Director-General Margaret Chan who spoke to reporters in Geneva today. However, there is a danger that such serums could contain other infections and wouldn’t be administered properly, Chan said.

The WHO is encouraging the use of properly obtained serum to treat current patients and said last week it should be a priority. A third U.S. missionary worker who was infected with Ebola in Liberia and flown to the U.S. for medical care was treated with blood transfusions from another American who recovered from the virus last month. Doctors hope the virus-fighting antibodies in the blood help the 51-year-old physician, Rick Sacra.

“We’re hoping it jump starts his immunity,” Phil Smith, medical director of the biocontainment unit at the hospital in Omaha, Nebraska, where Sacra is being treated, said yesterday during a conference call with reporters. “To survive you have to build up enough antibodies to neutralize the virus. We’re hoping to buy him some time, in other words, to give him antibodies to help his immune system battle the Ebola virus and let him get ahead of the curve.”

However, Bloomberg reports that doctors at the hospital have been told not to disclose which experimental drug is being given to Sacra each day.

“There isn’t enough information available on its benefits, there is a very small supply and the doctors don’t want to encourage the belief that it may be a cure-all,” Smith said.

“We don’t know if this is having an effect at all,” Smith said. “We just administered everything we had access to, honestly.”

Ebola is causing serious havoc in West Africa, and has already taken the lives of more than 2,000 people in three countries including Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea.