Cipla's Hamied offers anti-viral drugs to treat Ebola, says it could be an offshoot of HIV

Encouraged by the success achieved by doctors using anti-AIDS drugs to treat Ebola patients in rural Liberia and Sierra Leone, Cipla Chairman YK Hamied is offering, initially for free, drugs it makes like Lamivudine, Tenofovir, Entecavir and Adefovir, used in HIV and Hepatits C, to anyone in India or abroad wanting to use these anti-viral drugs to treat the Ebola virus.

Speaking to Business Today, Hamied says he is increasingly getting convinced that Ebola is an offshoot of HIV. "Please remember Ebola is also a virus and the success achieved by some doctors in Africa in treating Ebola patients with anti-HIV drugs could be a good stop-gap arrangement in case of an emergency like this to deal with the deadly virus till a vaccine is found. We must try all options to find an answer instead of just telling patients to go home and die, which is what the world did 10 years ago to patients of HIV."

Hamied referred to articles in newspapers abroad, particularly the story of Dr Gobee Logan in rural Liberia who successfully treated patients at a clinic in Tubmanburg with the drug Lamivudine in a bid to save their lives and how 13 of his 15 patients survived.

Hamied says he wrote a letter last week to the World Health Organisation to find out how many of the 10,000 afflicted by Ebola were HIV positive. He has also written to the Indian commerce ministry making his offer and raising the question on whether Ebola was an offshoot of HIV and the possible treatment for it.

On making of vaccine for Ebola in India, there are apparent challenges at the moment. According to Suresh Jadhav, Executive Director, Serum Institute of India, a leading producer of important vaccines like those for Diphtheria, Tetanus, Pertussis, says there are only two laboratories in India that have the high level of bio-safety - called BSL level 4 - to handle this. These labs are the National Institute of Virology in Pune and a defence institute in Jhansi.

He feels the government could allow the private sector to use these facilities, though at the moment the bigger challenge would be getting permission from the health ministry to first allow the import of this disease strain into India, as they may not agree.