A major international clinical trial has officially opened enrolment in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to evaluate the first potential treatments for the rare Bundibugyo virus strain of Ebola.<\/p>\n
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Named the Platform Adaptive Randomised Trial for New and Repurposed Filovirus TreatmentS (PARTNERS) trial, the study will evaluate whether a monoclonal antibody , the antiviral drug remdesivir, or a combination of both can improve survival rates. While effective treatments exist for the more common Zaire Ebola strain, there are currently no approved therapeutics that work across all virus types, leaving healthcare workers without a validated weapon against the Bundibugyo variant.<\/p>\n
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The urgency of the trial is underscored by the scale of the current outbreak in the DRC, where over 1 400 people have been diagnosed, nearly 210 have recovered, and nearly 440 have died. Sponsored by the World Health Organisation (WHO), the platform trial is designed to run seamlessly across multiple outbreaks, allowing researchers to add new experimental treatments as they become available.<\/p>\n
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Health officials highlighted that integrating the trial directly into current clinical care allows patients of all ages immediate access to promising investigational therapies while generating crucial, real-time data. The initiative brings together national authorities, Africa CDC, and prominent international research institutions, including the DRC\u2019s Institut National de Recherche Biom\u00e9dicale, the United Kingdom’s University of Oxford, and Belgium’s Institute of Tropical Medicine, alongside humanitarian frontline teams from MSF and ALIMA.<\/p>\n
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–ChannelAfrica\/WHO–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":20673,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[26],"class_list":["post-38659","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Trial launches in DRC to find first approved Ebola Bundibugyo treatment","published_date":"2026-07-02 18:42:34","news_description":"Trial launches in DRC to find first approved Ebola Bundibugyo treatment","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/38659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/38659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38660,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/38659\/revisions\/38660"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=38659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}