Medical aid group to host 3 Ebola clinical trials

FILE - In this Oct. 27, 2014 file photo, health workers unload the lifeless body of a man suspected of contracting the Ebola virus, as they carry him to a grave site on the outskirts of Monrovia, Liberia. Health officials in the U.S. and Europe are scrambling to begin testing a handful of experimental Ebola drugs in Africa, but an ethical debate is brewing over how to appropriately test medicines amid an outbreak that has already killed nearly 5,000 people. (AP Photo/Abbas Dulleh, File) FILE - In this Oct. 27, 2014 file photo, health workers unload the lifeless body of a man suspected of contracting the Ebola virus, as they carry him to a grave site on the outskirts of Monrovia, Liberia. Health officials in the U.S. and Europe are scrambling to begin testing a handful of experimental Ebola drugs in Africa, but an ethical debate is brewing over how to appropriately test medicines amid an outbreak that has already killed nearly 5,000 people. (AP Photo/Abbas Dulleh, File)

By Associated Press November 13, 2014 2 min read

GENEVA (AP) – Accelerated clinical trials will be launched in West Africa to speed the search for a treatment for the deadly Ebola virus, Doctors Without Borders announced Thursday.

The international humanitarian group said it will host clinical trials starting next month in three Ebola treatment centers using experimental drugs that haven’t been through the usual lengthy process of study with animals and healthy people.

Separate trials will be led by three different research partners and involve the U.N. World Health Organization and health officials in affected countries.

“If we’re going to find a treatment, we have to do it now – which is why we have to accelerate these trials,” said Peter Horby, the chief investigator for the trial led by Oxford University.

Oxford’s trial will test the antiviral drug brincidofovir in Liberia.