Officials at the health organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expect this tactic to be used humanely.
A sanitary barrier was used in 1821, when France sent 30,000 troops into the Pyrenees to stop a lethal fever raging in Spain from crossing the border. At the same time, after its medical experts met in Switzerland on Monday to discuss the issue, the World Health Organization approved that experimental drugs and untested treatments to be used to combat the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
Last week the WHO declared the Ebola outbreak was a global health emergency. More than 1,000 people have died in Africa. Even some such treatments will be provided, very limited supplies will be available. Canada, as an example, has about 1,500 doses of an experimental Ebola vaccine and is offering to ship 800 to 1,000 of them to countries in Africa. The VSV-EBOV vaccine has never been tested in humans but it “has shown promise in animal trials.” Probably the vaccine will be first offered to health-care workers at the front lines of the outbreak It will be needed month to produce another small batch of the drug.
