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As news swirls that the two Americans who were flown to Georgia to be treated in an Atlanta hospital for Ebola are increasingly improving, a top Ebola expert is asking the question on many minds — what about the people in Africa?

In fact, three of the world’s leading Ebola specialists have come forward to express their concern that the West African nations battling the almost-always deadly virus aren’t getting the attention that just two Americans received when they contracted the disease.

From Think Progress:

Three of the world’s leading Ebola specialists — including one of the individuals who first discovered the virus back in 1976 — say that the residents of Western African countries should get the opportunity to see whether untested drugs could help them survive, if they consent to the treatment.

“African governments should be allowed to make informed decisions about whether or not to use these products — for example to protect and treat healthcare workers who run especially high risks of infection,” Peter Piot, David Heymann, and Jeremy Farrar wrote in a joint statement. All three are infectious disease experts at major public health organizations in Europe, and Piot was one of the scientists who discovered Ebola in what was then known as Zaire.

Health officials in Liberia, which has been hit particularly hard by the current Ebola outbreak, are also questioning the disparity between the medical treatment that Americans and Liberians are receiving. “This is something that has made our job most difficult,” the country’s assistant health minister, Dr. Tolbert Nyenswah, told the Wall Street Journal this week. “The population here is asking: ‘You said there was no cure for Ebola, but the Americans are curing it?’”

If you recall, the U.S. citizens being treated in a special isolation unit at Emory University Hospital were given an experimental serum that, from reports, seems to be improving their condition.

The serum has not, however, been approved by the government.

The treatment has helped monkeys survive the deadly virus, which has killed about 60 percent of the people who have caught it over the past several months. These experimental treatments aren’t without some controversy; while a handful of potential Ebola drugs appear to be promising, they haven’t actually been tested in humans, and it’s not clear whether they’ll be effective. Still, there’s an obvious divide when it comes to who gets the chance to try.

So far, Ebola has killed 932 in the West African nations of Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and Guinea. More than 1,000 have contracted the virus.

SOURCE: Think Progress | PHOTO CREDIT: Getty