A medical practitioner Dr. Gobee Logan in rural Liberia who has a handful of Ebola patients disclosed that his trial of treating the virus with a HIV drug out of desperation has produced positive results.
Logan has administered the drug, lamivudine, to about 15 Ebola patients who all survived except for two persons who died which is far lower than the average death rate.
The virus has killed 70 percent of its victims across West Africa. CNN reports.
Logan was said to have reportedly read about the medication and similarities between Ebola and HIV in a medical journal.
Outside his Ebola center in Tubmanburg, four of his recovering patients walk the grounds, always staying inside the fence that separates the Ebola patients from everyone else.
Narrating her ordeal, a 23-year old Elizabeth Kundu said, “My stomach was hurting; I was feeling weak; I was vomiting,”. “They gave me medicine, and I’m feeling fine. We take it, and we can eat – we’re feeling fine in our bodies.”
Kundu together with the other 12 patients who took the lamivudine and survived, received the drug in the first five days of their illness or thereabout. The two patients who died received it between the fifth and the eight day.
Logan presumed that if the case is presented earlier, there is possibility that the medicine can help adding that he had proven it in his Ebola center.
However, Logan being careful about the lamivudine because it could cause liver and other problems disclosed that it was a worthwhile risk owing to the deadly nature of the Ebola disease.
He also acknowledged that American researchers will say only a real study can prove effectiveness. That would involve taking a much larger patient population and giving half of them lamivudine and the other half a placebo.
Moreover, he warded off the studies issue from the researchers noting that he was doing his best as a doctor to save lives of people under his care.
