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LIBERIA (CNN) – In west Africa, doctors are struggling to treat the thousands who are already infected with Ebola.
Shortages of almost everything exits inside an Ebola isolation unit in rural Africa.
A worker carries cameras inside where there are sick patients, including children.
“In a situation like this I have to use every brain cell to save some people’s lives. This is our central supply room,” Dr. Gobee Logan said.
For Logan, desperate times call for desperate measures.
While the world waits for a proven Ebola drug, he’s experimenting with an HIV drug called lamivudine.
“In order for everyone in this unit not to die, I think I need to try this medication,” Logan said.
Four young women – Elizabeth, Susan, Fatu and Massa – came to the unit with Ebola. But they were given the HIV drug. And now they’re doing well. They’re able to walk around and they’ll be discharged soon.
“They are taking care of us fine. They are giving us medicine fine. We can eat fine. We are feeling fine in our body,” one patient said.
Logan has tried the drug on 15 patients so far, and remarkably only two have died.
Across west Africa the outbreak is killing at a rate of 70 percent, but in this group of patients just seven percent.
The doctor was asked if it possible that an effective treatment for Ebola may have come from his Ebola treatment center in this rural area?
“Yes it’s highly possible,” Logan said.
Top scientists in the U.S. were asked if Logan’s approach make sense.
They say yes, Ebola and HIV cells are a lot alike.
But they want a lot more proof.
“Well,… our people are dying and you’re taking about studies?! It’s a matter of doing all that I can as a doctor to save some people’s lives,” the doctor said.
The latest figures from the World Health Organization show more than 1,600 confirmed or suspected deaths from Ebola in Liberia.
Copyright 2014 CNN. All rights reserved.
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