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Wednesday 8 October 2014
Spain quarantines four in Ebola scare
Nurse with first infection outside of Africa,
husband and two others in isolation to prevent
spread.
Spain has quarantined a total of four people in an
attempt to prevent the spread of Ebola after a
nurse became the first confirmed case of
infection outside West Africa.
The 40-year-old nurse, her husband, another
health worker and a Spaniard who travelled to
Nigeria are in isolation in hospital,
Madrid health officials said on Tuesday.
The husband shows no symptoms, and the health
worker has diarrhoea but no fever. There was no
information about the condition of the fourth
person.
One of the four has tested negative for the
disease, the Reuters news agency reported on
Tuesday, citing a Spanish health official. It was not
clear who of the four was tested.
Rafael Perez-Santamaria, the head of the
Carlos III Hospital, said a further 22 people who
had been in with the nurse contact were being
monitored.
The nurse had treated a 75-year-old Spanish
missionary who had caught the disease in Liberia,
and a 69-year-old priest who caught Ebola in
Sierra Leone. Both missionaries died, the first on
August 12 and the second on September 25.
The nurse fell ill on September 30, and officials
said she entered the room of the second patient
twice.
"This has taken us by surprise," said Perez-
Santamaria. "We are revising our protocols,
improving them. The priority remains to find out
what actually happened."
The health ministry's chief coordinator for health
alerts and emergencies, Fernando Simon, told
local radio that there was a small chance that
people who had come into contact with the nurse
may have contracted the disease.
A small number of public health workers
demonstrated in Madrid over the infection, and
the danger faced by hospital staff.
"This is not a game to be played in the way they
have done. It is a very worrying matter and they
have not handled it correctly," a nursing assistant
at Madrid's La Paz hospital, which one of the
missionaries had visited.
A cardiologist at the hospital added: "We cannot
understand how someone who was wearing a
double protection suit and two pairs of gloves
could have been contaminated."
Health worker strike
The outbreak of Ebola, the worst on record, has
infected at least 7,400 people, according to the
World Health Organisation. At least 3,400 people
have died of the disease in Liberia, Sierra Leone
and Guinea, the three countries most affected by
the epidemic.
On Tuesday, UNICEF delivered 70 metric tonnes
of supplies to Guinea to help the country combat
Ebola, according to the Manuel Fontaine, the
organisation's regional director for West and
Central Africa.
The supplies included protective equipment for
health staff, basic drugs, nutrition, water and
sanitation supplies, he said. Fontaine added that
UNICEF had delivered 600 metric tonnes of
supplies to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone - the
three countries hit-hardest by the Ebola outbreak
- over the past two weeks.
Also on Tuesday teams in charge of burying
bodies of Ebola victims in two Sierra Leone
districts went on strike over the non-payment of
their weekly risk allowences, the leaders of the
groups say.
The two districts the teams cover include the
capital city of Freetown.
"We have not been paid for two weeks and right
now we need our money. We don't even care if
dead bodies have been littered all over the city,
all we want is our money. We have been
stigmatised in our communities, so let the
government try to pay us our money," said one of
the burial team members, requesting anonymity.
Responding to the strike, Sierra Leone's deputy
health minister Madina Rahman said the teams
had been paid through the end of September.
They are only owed for this week, she said, and
the money has been released to the banks and
will be paid them later this week. She did not
comment on the demand for risk pay.
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