By Emma Farge
GENEVA, Nov 4 (Reuters) – A British healthcare worker infected with Ebola is being medically evacuated from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Britain for specialist treatment, according to an official document seen by Reuters.
The patient is in a stable condition and is expected to arrive in Britain on Wednesday or Thursday, before being transferred by a specialist ambulance to a high-consequence infectious disease unit, the document showed.
It quoted British authorities saying they did not expect the case to have a serious public health impact in Britain, and anticipated no disruption to international travel or trade.
“A British citizen currently in the DRC has tested positive for Ebola,” a spokesperson for Britain’s government told Reuters in an emailed statement. “… The risk to the UK public from Ebola remains low.”
FIRST BRITISH CASE IN CURRENT OUTBREAK
The patient, whose identity was not disclosed, had been sent to Congo by a humanitarian organisation to help support the response to the outbreak.
In response to questions about the patient, the World Health Organization referred Reuters to the British authorities.
“WHO has supported several medical evacuations at the request of partners and governments,” a spokesperson said by email, without providing further detail.
It is the first case involving a British national linked to the current outbreak, although several other people from elsewhere in Europe have been infected.
Switzerland last month evacuated an Ebola patient from Nigeria for treatment, while France in June reported its first confirmed case tied to the outbreak in a doctor returning from a humanitarian mission in Congo.
Ebola is a severe viral disease spread through direct contact with an infected person’s bodily fluids. The World Health Organization says the disease is fatal in about half of cases on average, though mortality rates vary between outbreaks.
British health authorities say the risk to the wider public from imported Ebola cases remains low and the National Health Service has procedures in place to manage suspected and confirmed infections.
Imported cases are rare, with only four confirmed cases recorded in Britain since 1976, according to the UK Health Security Agency.
The outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo is the second-largest on record, with more than 10,000 confirmed cases and nearly 5,000 deaths reported by late October.
(Reporting by Emma Farge in Geneva, Sam Tabahriti and Jennifer Rigby in London. Additional reporting by Olivia Le Poidevin in Geneva. Writing by Sam Tabahriti. Editing by Sam Tobin, Barbara Lewis and Gareth Jones)
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