Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Dr. Lance Plyler prayed. He had a choice to make. Two colleagues at a hospital in Liberia, Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, were battling the deadly Ebola virus. The air ambulance had turned back with a mechanical problem, and Plyler feared they wouldn't survive much longer. Against the odds, the medical missionary from North Carolina had managed to find some of the last available supplies of a promising new drug, ZMapp, in neighboring Sierra Leone. A Styrofoam box containing three frozen vials of straw-colored fluid was flown to the border, canoed across a river and put on a plane to Monrovia, the Liberian capital. But there was enough to treat only one person. The developers were insistent: It would take all three doses to knock out the virus. "Whatever you do," they told him, "don't split the course." (Alexandra Zavis, 12/23)
