The world’s first trials of a drug against the Marburg virus have begun in Rwanda.

Rwanda has begun the world’s first clinical trial of a drug against Marburg virus amid an outbreak of the disease in the country, the World Health Organization (WHO) regional office for Africa said.

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“Today, Rwanda began the world’s first clinical trial of a drug for Marburg virus disease in collaboration with WHO,”  a post on the African chapter’s X social media page says.

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It is noted that during clinical trials the safety and effectiveness of the drug Remdesivir, which has previously been used to treat COVID-19, as well as an antibody called MBP091, developed specifically to combat the Marburg virus, will be tested.

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WHO also points out that the clinical trials were preceded by two years of work by almost 200 scientists and health ministries from 17 countries in Africa and other parts of the world.

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WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on October 3 that 36 cases of Marburg virus disease had been identified in Rwanda, 11 of which had died. The organization noted that it assesses the risk of an outbreak of the highly lethal Marburg virus in Rwanda as “very high at the national level.” At the same time, at the regional level, WHO considers the risk “high,” and at the global level, “low.”