In a bid to curb the outbreak of the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD), the World Health Organisation (WHO) yesterday assembled 200 health experts in Geneva, Switzerland to discuss how to end the world’s worst-ever outbreak of the killer virus.

Eight experimental treatments and two vaccines for Ebola were on the table for consideration. No fully tested and approved treatments or vaccines exist for Ebola, which has killed more than 1,900 people in West Africa since the beginning of the year.

In a bid to stem the epidemic, the World Health Organization has condoned the use of experimental drugs, and experts in Geneva were discussing which treatments were in the pipeline and how quickly they could be made available to the public.

In a working document for the closed-door meeting, the UN health agency listed eight potential therapies, including the experimental drug ZMapp, which has been given to a handful of frontline health workers who have contracted Ebola, three of whom have recovered, and two of whom have died. Two experimental vaccines for Ebola, which transmits through contact with infected bodily fluids, were also listed.

“None are clinically proven,” WHO stressed in its working document, adding that “while extraordinary measures are now in place to accelerate the pace of clinical trials, new treatments or vaccines are not expected for widespread use before the end of 2014.”

“Until then, only small quantities of up to a few doses/treatments will be available,” it said, pointing out that in normal circumstances, the clinical evaluation period for new drugs and vaccines can take up to a decade.

The experts meeting Thursday, including policy makers, ethicists, clinicians, researchers and patient representatives from affected countries, also aimed to facilitate contacts between countries affected by the disease and countries producing treatments.

These developments came as the two Ebola Isolation centres in Bayelsa, the Federal Medical Centre (FMC) and Niger Delta University Teaching Hospital yesterday dismissed as “a dangerous” rumour the claims that four deaths recorded in the state from the dreaded Ebola virus, saying abandoned corpse in the state capital was a hit and run case.

Also, France yesterday said it would send about 20 specialists in biological disasters to West Africa to help stop the spread of Ebola after international health organisations lamented the lack of aid from the West to tackle the epidemic. France said it was sending the experts from the EPRUS Institute, which specialises in responding to health emergencies.

The experts would be based in Guinea for the next three months to coordinate with local authorities. Meanwhile, Nigerian authorities are monitoring nearly 400 people for signs of Ebola after they came in contact with a Port Harcourt doctor who died of the disease but hid the fact that he had been exposed, a senior Nigerian health official said on Thursday.

Dr. Abdulsalami Nasidi, project director at Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, said there was a sense of “hopelessness” due to the lack of proven drugs or vaccines to treat Ebola that has infected 18 people in Africa’s most populous nation. The Rivers State Government has declared that it has covered 98 per cent of both primary and secondary contacts of those suspected to have come in contact with Oluibukun Koye, a Nigerian protocol officer with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), and the late Dr. Iyke Samuel Enemuo, who treated him.

The government also said that it was not having any problem with all the 360 people under surveillance, noting that they have been provided with thermometers to check and monitor their body temperature regularly and under monitor by medical experts.

The Commissioner for Health, Dr. Samson Parker, who disclosed this to reporters, also dispelled rumours that Enemuo’s wife who is currently being treated at the national treatment centre in Lagos, has died. He said that Enemuo’s wife was fine and stable and was still receiving treatment in Lagos.