WHO Ebola in Spain is over

WHO: Ebola outbreak in Spain declared over

03/12/2014

A nursing assistant in Spain, who had become infected with a missionary with Ebola, has survived the dangerous illness. In addition, there were no further infections in the country. The World Health Organization (WHO) therefore declared the Ebola outbreak in Spain to be over.

Spain is Ebola-free
On Tuesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared the Ebola outbreak in Spain over, reports the news agency dpa. A nursing assistant had been infected there at the end of September with the supply of a flown in from West Africa missionary with the virus. The missionary has not survived the extremely dangerous disease, the helper, however, already. In early November, the 44-year-old was dismissed as healed from a Madrid hospital.

Patient has survived dangerous illness
On the part of the WHO, the „care“ praised that Spain had prevented the further spread of the virus. However, it had been criticized in Spanish circles that the assistant in an isolation ward was even infected with the infectious disease. The WHO announced that a second Ebola test on the patient had been negative on October 21. Because there were no further cases for 42 days, Spain could be considered Ebola-free. In the country over 230 contact persons from the environment of the woman had been made for safety reasons for three weeks under observation. According to the information, 15 of them had to spend their time in strict quarantine.

WHO corrects numbers down
In the meantime, according to the latest WHO data from Tuesday evening, 17,111 people in East Africa have contracted Ebola and 6,055 died of it. The WHO had upped their numbers once in the past few days and then down again. This has to do with the not completely reliable data collection in the West African countries. Anyway, the WHO assumes a high number of unreported cases. Many experts fear that in the affected countries many people who have typical Ebola symptoms such as fever, nausea or diarrhea, often can not go to the doctor and thus can not be registered or can propagate a possible infection.

US now better prepared for Ebola
Meanwhile, according to the White House, the US is far more prepared for any Ebola outbreak in their own country than it was recently. Among other things, it has been reported that a total of 53 beds in 35 US hospitals are now available for the targeted treatment of Ebola patients. In addition, the Ebola test capacity of 13 facilities was expanded in August to 42 laboratories. There was also positive news from England recently: The British Foundation „Wellcome Trust“ announced that a new portable lab should report an Ebola infection in blood and saliva within fifteen minutes. The rapid test will be tested in Guinea. (Ad)