The Spanish priest Fr. Miguel Pajares died in the isolation unit of a hospital in Madrid, where he was taken after contracting Ebola while performing missionary work in Liberia.  His death could be the first failure of the experimental Ebola drug under development by a California pharmaceutical company.

Because of confidentiality rules, officials in Madrid would not say whether the priest had been treated with the experimental drug ZMapp from Mapp Biopharmaceuticals in San Diego.  But the Spanish Health Ministry had earlier stated that it had obtained the medication for him.  The same unapproved drug was rushed to Liberia to treat an American doctor and an aid worker who were then evacuated to the US and appear to be improving.

The World Health Organization in Geneva has endorsed the use of untested drugs to combat the Ebola virus, which has a 55 percent fatality rate in this outbreak.  There’s no proven cure and no vaccine for Ebola, so it’s not as if these drugs could do too much harm. 

Mapp Biopharmaceuticals says it is now out of ZMapp having sent all remaining doses to Liberia, and is ramping up production of more doses.  Researchers at Newlink Genetics in Iowa say they have a vaccine that was 100 percent effective when tested on monkeys.  The company got a federal grant to ramp up its work and to speed up human testing.

“Every minute of every day and some nights and weekends we've been working on this,” said Dr. Jay Ramsey, Newlink Genetics’s clinical and regulatory compliance officer.