Canada to donate Ebola vaccine to fight outbreak in West Africa

Canada plans to donate up to 1,000 doses of an experimental Ebola vaccine to help fight the disease in West Africa after the World Health Organization (WHO) said it was ethical to use untested drugs on Ebola patients, BBC reported.

However, according to experts, supplies of both the vaccine and the experimental drug Zmapp were limited and development of additional supplies would take months.

The current outbreak had taken a toll of over 1,800 lives.

According to Canada between 800 and 1,000 doses of the vaccine, which had only been tested on animals, would be donated to the World Health Organization (WHO) for use in West Africa.

It would however, keep a small portion of the vaccine for research and if the need arose in Canada.

Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria had been affected by the current outbreak.

Dr Gregory Taylor, deputy head of Canada's Public Health Agency, says he sees the vaccines as a "global resource".

He added he had been advised that it would make sense for healthcare workers to be given the vaccine, given their increased risk of contracting the disease.

Meanwhile, Liberia said it planned to treat two infected doctors with ZMapp making them the first Africans to receive the drug, which had been administered to a Spanish priest who later died and two US aid workers, Reuters reported.

The outbreak which comes as the world's largest and deadliest disease outbreak had the UN agency last week declaring it an international health emergency.

The WHO has appealed for funds and medical staff to supplement health care in one of the poorest regions in the world.

There are no licensed treatments or vaccines for the contagious haemorrhagic disease, however, several biotech companies and research teams had been working on potential drugs.

According to the WHO's panel of medical ethicists, several experimental drugs had passed the laboratory and animal study phases of development and needed to be fast-tracked into clinical trials and made available for compassionate use.

The WHO meeting was called after ZMapp, made by US biotech company Mapp Biopharmaceutical, was administered to two US aid workers infected in Liberia.

According to WHO's assistant director general Marie-Paule Kieny, she had heard reports that the treatment had had a swift and dramatic effect on them.