Ebola drugs to be trialled on infected patients in West Africa A health worker wears protective gear at a treatment centre run by Medecins Sans Frontieres in Monrovia, Liberia. The aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres is to begin a series of clinical trials of drugs and other potential cures for Ebola patients in West Africa. The agency will use three of its network of treatment centres in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia to carry out testing of drugs and blood products that scientists are developing to fight the virus. Clinicians would not normally carry out such trials during a humanitarian crisis, but they say the scale of the outbreak is so serious that there is no choice. One of the MSF trials is being conducted by staff from Oxford University, who are using the antiviral drug brincidofovir, which inhibits a virus's ability to multiply. In Gueckedou in Guinea, the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research will experiment with another antiviral drug, favipiravir. Another trial, conducted by the Antwerp Institute of Tropical Medicine in the Guinean capital, Conakry, will take place using blood and plasma products developed from the blood of Ebola survivors. The news comes as Liberia lifted a state of emergency imposed for its "very survival" three months ago as the deadly virus cut a swathe through the west African nation. The announcement, the clearest sign yet that the country believes it is beating an epidemic which has claimed nearly 3000 Liberian lives, follows a dramatic recent drop in new cases. "I have informed the leadership of the national legislature that I will not seek an extension of the state of emergency," President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf announced on state-owned radio network ELBC on Thursday. Dr Sirleaf announced the emergency regime on August 6, speaking of "a clear and present danger" from Ebola, which at the time had claimed around 1000 lives across west Africa. Meanwhile, in Mali investigators have identified five people infected by Ebola and have a sixth suspected case as the nation races to contain the virus. More than 200 people who had contacts with those individuals have been identified, and new cases will probably be confirmed in the coming days, Hubert Balique, a French public-health expert consulting with the French embassy in Mali, told reporters on Thursday in the capital city, Bamako. A 25-year-old nurse died from Ebola on November 11 at a clinic in Mali, the World Health Organisation and Mali health authorities said on November 12. She had treated a 70-year-old grand imam from Guinea, who was hospitalised for kidney failure and wasn't tested for Ebola. A worker at the same clinic is in isolation as officials race to prevent the virus from spreading further in a fourth West African nation. The Pasteur Clinic in Bamako, where the clinic staff member and the nurse worked, has been quarantined, France's embassy said. Mali is getting help from the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention to trace people who have had contact with Ebola-infected individuals, Mr Balique said. Senegal and Nigeria have been declared free of the disease. Mali last month became the sixth country in West Africa to confirm a case of Ebola, when a woman brought her infected 2-year-old granddaughter from Guinea. The WHO now lists four deaths in Mali, including the original case, which is unrelated to the current outbreak. Ebola has killed more than 5000 people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone since December, making it the worst outbreak since the disease was identified in 1976 in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. Telegraph, London, AFP, Bloomberg