Germany Ebola patient cured
October 4, 2014
The University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf confirmed on Saturday that its Ebola patient had been cured and subsequently sent home.
"We are very happy that he can now return to his home country," the hospital said in a statement.
The man, whose identity has not been made public, had contracted the deadly virus while working for the World Health Organization (WHO) in Sierra Leone.
Officials brought the infected man to Germany in late August. According to the Hamburg hospital, he had stopped showing signs of infection days before being discharged on Friday.
It was not immediately clear when he would return to his native Senegal.
A hospital in Frankfurt recently began treating a Ugandan man who had also contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone.
West Africa begins receiving aid
Germany's first shipment of aid arrived in Liberia on Friday, which included protective clothing and other medical supplies.
The arrival came shortly before the United Nations Mission on Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER) announced it would send five helicopters, vehicles and motorcycles to aid workers who are trying to track the virus.
"We have to [act] as fast as we can because every day longer that it takes, more people die and that is not acceptable," UNMEER head Antony Banbury told Reuters news agency.
Health officials across the world face numerous challenges in containing the epidemic, including simply distributing educational information about Ebola. Local officials are working to inform both the public and sectors workers who could come into contact with infected people, such as on airplanes.
However, hospitals also face the challenge of ensuring their staff remains informed about the epidemic. Last week, health officials in the US were alarmed when emergency room employees at a hospital in Dallas, Texas mistakenly discharged a patient infected with Ebola, even though he had said he recently travelled through West Africa.
The Ebola epidemic has hit the West African countries of Sierra Leone, Ghana and Liberia the hardest. Since March, the virus has claimed the lives of 3,439 people, according to the latest figures from the WHO.
kms/rc (AP, epd)