TheCable

A Ugandan doctor suspected to be suffering from Ebola disease arrived in Frankfurt from Sierra Leone on Friday for treatment in the city’s university hospital, the News Agency of Nigeria is reporting.

It quoted Stefan Gruettner, health minister of German state, Hesse, as telling journalists in Wiesbaden, Frankfurt that the Ugandan had worked for an Italian non-governmental organisation and had also attended to patients in Sierra Leone.

Gruettner explained that the doctor was in Germany for treatment, saying that the hospital had capacity to help him.

He said the World Health Organisation (WHO) had asked Germany if it could help in taking care of the patient.

“It is a sign for those who help in the regions where the disease has broken out, especially badly, that they can get help if they contract the disease themselves,” he said.

Head of the Frankfurt competence centre for highly contagious life-threatening diseases, Rene Gottschalk, sai the Ugandan doctor was being treated in an isolation unit in the Frankfurt hospital.

Gottschalk disclosed that the patient was conveyed from the airport to the hospital in a special vehicle.

Latest report from WHO indicates that at least 3,338 people had died of the Ebola disease in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria.

Tuesday’s discovery of the first case of Ebola in the US has heightened concerns that the disease could spread globally and could raise further questions about travel restrictions from affected countries.