Ronaldo, Robben up for UEFA award

Paris - German World Cup-winning goalkeeper
Manuel Neuer, Netherlands winger Arjen Robben
and Real Madrid and Portugal star Cristiano
Ronaldo are the three contenders to win UEFA's
Best Player in Europe Award for 2013/14.
The winner, to be announced on August 28 in
Monaco, where the draw for the group stage of
the Champions League is taking place, will
succeed last year's victor Franck Ribery.
A jury made up of journalists from the 54
member associations of UEFA will decide the
winner.
Also read : Robben gutted by defeat
Neuer and Robben were both part of the Bayern
Munich side that won the domestic league and
cup double in Germany last season, while the
former was the outstanding goalkeeper at the
World Cup and Robben impressed as the Dutch
finished third.
Ronaldo did not shine at the World Cup but he
did star as Real Madrid won the Champions
League and Copa del Rey.

Liberia ponders on who should get Ebola drug

Monrovia - Liberia faced is faced with an
excruciating choice deciding which handful of
Ebola patients will receive an experimental drug
that could prove either life-saving or life-
threatening.
ZMapp, the untested Ebola drug, arrived in the
West African country late Wednesday. Assistant
Health Minister Tolbert Nyenswah said three or
four people would begin getting it Thursday.
The government had previously said two
doctors would receive the treatment, but it was
unclear who else would.
Also read: ZMapp Ebola drug stock finished
These are the last known doses of ZMapp left
in the world. The San Diego-based company
that developed it has said it will take months to
build up even a modest supply.
An Ebola outbreak that began in Guinea and
spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria has
killed more than 1,060 of the 1,970 people
sickened since it was detected in March,
according to the World Health Organization. It
has overwhelmed the already strained health
systems in West Africa and sparked an
international debate over the ethics of giving
drugs that have not yet been tested for safety
or efficacy to the sick.
The charity group Doctors Without Borders,
which is running many of the Ebola treatment
centers and whose staff have tussled with
whether to provide ZMapp, said such choices
present "an impossible dilemma."
Now Liberian officials are facing those
questions.
"The criteria of selection is difficult, but it is
going to be done," said Dr. Moses Massaquoi,
who helped Liberia obtain the drug from Mapp
Biopharmaceutical. "We are going to look at
how critical people are. We are definitely going
to be focusing on medical staff."
Massaquoi said people who were past the
"critical phase" and looked likely to survive
would not be treated with it.
In this outbreak, over 50 percent of those
getting Ebola have died, according to the U.N.
health agency.
So far, ZMapp has been given to three people:
two Americans and a Spaniard priest. The
Americans are improving but it is unclear what
role the drug has played. The Spaniard died
earlier this week in Madrid.
Nigeria announced Thursday that one more
person has been infected with Ebola, bringing
the country's number of cases to 11. Health
Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu said the latest
patient is a doctor who helped treat the first
Ebola case in the country, Liberian-American
Patrick Sawyer who flew in last month with the
virus and died July 25.