The lack of drugs and unavailability of experimental treatment in the most affected regions of the West African Ebola virus outbreak spurred some controversy.  The fact that the drug was first given to Americans and a European and not to Africans, according to the Los Angeles Times, "provoked outrage, feeding into African perceptions of Western insensitivity and arrogance, with a deep sense of mistrust and betrayal still lingering over the exploitation and abuses of the colonial era".  Salim S. Abdool Karim, the director of an AIDS research center in South Africa, placed the issue in the context of the history of exploitation and abuses. Responding to a question on how people might have reacted if ZMapp and other drugs had first been used on Africans, he said "It would have been the front-page screaming headline: Africans used as guinea pigs for American drug companys medicine.
In early August, the World Health Organization called for convening a panel of medical authorities "to consider whether experimental drugs should be more widely released." In a statement, Peter Piot (co-discoverer of the Ebola virus); Jeremy Farrar, the director of the Wellcome Trust; and David Heymann of the Chatham House Center on Global Health Security, called for the release of experimental drugs for affected African nations.
At an August 6, 2014 press conference, Barack Obama, the President of the United States, was questioned regarding whether the cocktail should be fast-tracked for approval or be made available to sick patients outside of the United States. He responded, "I think weve got to let the science guide us. I dont think all the information's in on whether this drug is helpful."