BBC Online :Global health experts at the World Health Organization are meeting to discuss new measures to tackle the Ebola outbreak.The meeting – being held in Geneva, Switzerland – is expected to last two days and will decide whether to declare a global health emergency.That could involve imposing travel restrictions on affected areas.The outbreak began last February and has since spread to four African countries, claiming nearly 900 lives.It comes as leading infectious disease experts have called for experimental treatments to be offered more widely.Two US aid workers who contracted Ebola in Liberia appear to be improving after receiving an unapproved medicine before being evacuated back to the US.But it is not clear if the ZMapp drug, which has only been tested on monkeys, can be credited with their improvement.Prof Peter Piot, who co-discovered Ebola in 1976, Prof David Heymann, the head of the Centre on Global Health Security, and Wellcome Trust director Prof Jeremy Farrar said there were several drugs and vaccines under study for possible use against Ebola.”African governments should be allowed to make informed decisions about whether or not to use these products – for example to protect and treat healthcare workers who run especially high risks of infection,” they wrote in a joint statement.The World Health Organization (WHO), “the only body with the necessary international authority” to allow such experimental treatments, “must take on this greater leadership role”, they said.”These dire circumstances call for a more robust international response,” they added.Graph showing Ebola deaths since 1976The WHO meeting involves the organisation’s emergency committee and is solely focusing on how to respond to the Ebola outbreak.
