An Ebola isolation ward at Frankfurt University Hospital in Germany now has its first patient.
He is Dr Michael Mawanda, a 36-year-old Ugandan medical practitioner.
He was flown there last Friday by the officials of an Italian non-governmental organization which employed him in Sierra Leone as paediatrician after he was diagnosed with the deadly Ebola viral disease.
“His family notified the ministry of Health [Uganda] after he had been confirmed two days earlier. We are optimistic that he will be given proper treatment there,” said Rukia Nakamatte, the ministry’s publicist.
Dr Mawanda is about the latest medical doctor to catch Ebola.
He is the second Ugandan doctor to fall victim to Ebola this year after Dr Samuel Muhumuza Mutooro who died in Liberia in July.
Mawanda’s infection comes on the heels of that of Thomas E. Duncan whose critical condition in a Texas hospital in the USA has worsened fears of the disease spreading globally.
Duncan, a cameraman for the NBC news, was sent home to Dallas in Texas under the mistaken belief that he had a mild fever. He is now being treated at a Texas hospital where he has not been given any of the Ebola experimental drugs, with news from the hospital saying his condition had worsened to critical.
This outbreak of Ebola in West Africa has left more than 3,300 people dead and infected more than 7,000 others, mostly in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.