Is MIL-77 The New Ebola-Fighting Wonder Drug?

Corporal Anna Cross is the first person to be treated with the experimental drug MIL-77, raising hopes that the medicine may be a possible cure for the dealy Ebola virus.

Previously the drug Z-Mapp was being hailed as the best hope for fighting the disease, which has killed more than 10,000 people and infected around 25,000 since the latest outbreak last year.

Z-Mapp was used to treat the first Briton infected with the disease, nurse Will Pooley, as well as two US healthcare workers - Dr Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol.

Pauline Cafferkey, a Scottish nurse infected, was treated with plasma donated by Ebola survivors, after stocks of Z-Mapp ran out in January.

All four made a full recovery.

Cpl Cross, 25, was admitted to the Royal Free Hospital on 12 March and two weeks on has appeared at a news conference with doctors announcing she is now Ebola-free.

Dr Mike Jacobs, of the Royal Free Hospital, where Cpl Cross was treated, said the drug used to treat her - MIL-77 - was a close relative of Z-Mapp, which scientists claimed had healed 18 monkeys given a dose of Ebola.

The drug is made in China and is also a combination of antibodies given intravenously.

Dr Jacobs said it was impossible to say on the basis of treating one patient whether MIL-77 would work as well with others.

"Having recovered doesn't tell us it works because, in one patient, we just can't draw that conclusion. It will have to be used more widely...before we can say with certainty that the drug is helpful.

He said: "What I can tell you is that the treatment went very well.

"It caused no side effects that we were able to illicit and we were very happy with its use."

Meanwhile, the fight against Ebola in west Africa appears to be succeeding, with 79 new cases confirmed in the week to 22 March - the lowest weekly total this year so far, according to the World Health Organisation.

Guinea accounted for 45 of these cases and Sierra Leone had 33. Liberia, having had no new cases reported for the previous three weeks, had one new confirmed case.