A British healthcare worker who contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone – the first Briton to catch the deadly virus – has returned home for treatment.
Britain’s foreign secretary Philip Hammond authorised the repatriation of the male medical worker – whose identity has not been disclosed – after he was analysed by doctors from Britain and Sierra Leone.
A spokesman for Sierra Leone’s Ministry of Health, Yahya Tunis, said the man was a volunteer nurse working in Kenema in eastern Sierra Leone, one of the areas hardest hit by Ebola which has now been quarantined.
“His colleagues are very sad over the development as he is considered as a valued member,” Mr Tunis said, adding that he was involved in “surveillance, contact tracing and the burial of Ebola victims”.
The medical worker, who is not “seriously unwell” according to the Department of Health, arrived in London by military plane this morning (AEST), the Ministry of Defence said.
He will be treated at an isolation unit at the Royal Free Hospital in London, the only high-level isolation unit for treatment of infectious diseases in Britain and which has a team of specially-trained staff.
His bed will be sealed off with a tent with its own ventilation system. Only trained staff can enter the unit.
England’s deputy chief medical officer Professor John Watson insisted that the risk of the virus being spread in Britain remained “very low”.
“UK hospitals have a proven record of dealing with imported infectious diseases and this patient will be isolated and will receive the best care possible,” he said.
Ebola spreads through direct contact with the blood or bodily fluids of an infected person.
The worst ever outbreak of the hemorrhagic fever has so far killed at least 1,427 people, mostly in Sierra Leone, Liberia and neighbouring Guinea.
Five deaths have been reported in Nigeria and two cases have been confirmed in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The WHO has warned it could take several months to bring the epidemic under control.
Two US doctors, who contracted Ebola in Liberia and were evacuated to the United States, left hospital last week after receiving treatment with an experimental drug, ZMapp.
It was not clear what role the pharmaceutical played in their recovery.
Three African healthcare workers have also improved since receiving ZMapp in Liberia.
Its US-based manufacturer, Mapp Biopharmaceutical, has said limited supplies of the drug have already been exhausted.
First WHO worker to test positive for Ebola
Meanwhile, the WHO said one of its healthcare workers had also tested positive for Ebola for the first time in Sierra Leone.
The WHO said it was working to ensure that the foreign worker, who it did not identify, was receiving the best possible care, including the option of medical evacuation.
A government source in Sierra Leone, who asked not to be identified, said the worker was a Senegalese expert working for WHO in the eastern town of Kailahun.
The WHO has deployed nearly 400 people from its own staff and partner organisations since the outbreak was detected in March deep in the forest region of south-east Guinea.
In the past six months of the outbreak, more than 225 health workers have fallen ill and nearly 130 have lost their lives to the disease, WHO said.
It is the first outbreak of the disease in West Africa and the worst since it was discovered in 1976 in the jungles of Democratic Republic of Congo, then known as Zaire.
The WHO is due to release next week details of a draft strategy to combat the disease in West Africa.
The UN agency has faced criticism that it moved too slowly to contain the outbreak.
With the healthcare systems of Sierra Leone and Liberia already fragile following a decade of civil war in the 1990s, and still lacking staff, the WHO said a surge in foreign healthcare workers was essential.
United Nations senior system coordinator for Ebola David Nabarro said on Friday the strategy would involve increasing the number of foreign and national health workers fighting the disease.
Mr Nabarro visited Sierra Leone on Sunday, where he was due to see new laboratory and treatment centre in Freetown.
Congo declares Ebola outbreak after two cases confirmed
Democratic Republic of Congo declared an Ebola outbreak in its northern Equateur province on Sunday after two out of eight cases tested came back positive for the deadly virus, health minister Felix Kabange Numbi said.
A mysterious disease has killed dozens of people in Equateur in recent weeks but WHO said on Thursday it was not Ebola.
“I declare an Ebola epidemic in the region of Djera, in the territory of Boende in the province of Equateur,” Mr Kabange Numbi told a news conference.
The region lies about 1,200 kilometres north of the capital Kinshasa.
Mr Kabange Numbi said that one of the two cases that tested positive was for the Sudanese strain of the disease, while the other was a mixture between the Sudanese and the Zaire strain – the most lethal variety.
The outbreak in West Africa that has killed at least 1,427 people in West Africa since March is the Zaire strain.
WHO said on Thursday the disease which had killed at least 70 people in Equateur was a kind of hemorrhagic gastroenteritis.
A WHO spokesperson said the UN health agency could not confirm the results of the tests announced on Sunday, which were carried out by the Congolese authorities.
Reuters