Ebola Survivors’ Blood Must Be Priority Therapy, WHO Says
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Blood taken from the survivors of Ebola should be used to treat patients as a matter of priority as experts await results from safety trials on vaccines and drugs, the World Health Organization said.
Whole blood transfusions have already been used to treat some patients in West Africa, Marie-Paule Kieny, the WHO’s assistant director-general for health systems and innovation, said yesterday. The United Nations agency is helping governments in the affected countries to establish a system that can be reliably used to draw blood from survivors, prepare it and re-inject it safely into patients, she said.