British healthcare worker with Ebola evacuated from DR Congo to Britain
A British healthcare worker who tested positive for Ebola while supporting the humanitarian response in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is being medically evacuated to Britain for specialist treatment. The patient is in stable condition and is expected to arrive on Wednesday or Thursday, although no identity has been disclosed. On arrival, the worker will be transferred by specialist ambulance to a high-consequence infectious disease unit.
British authorities say the imported case is not expected to have a serious public-health impact. They assess the risk to the wider UK public as low and do not anticipate disruption to international travel or trade. The National Health Service has procedures for managing suspected and confirmed Ebola infections, and imported cases remain rare: only four have been confirmed in Britain since 1976.
This is the first case involving a British national in the current outbreak, although other European humanitarian workers have also been infected. Switzerland evacuated an Ebola patient from Nigeria last month, while France reported its first confirmed case linked to the outbreak in June, involving a doctor returning from a mission in DR Congo. Ebola spreads through direct contact with an infected person’s body fluids and is fatal in about half of cases on average, though outcomes vary. By late October, the DR Congo outbreak had recorded more than 10,000 confirmed cases and nearly 5,000 deaths, making it the second-largest on record.
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