German health authorities Tuesday took to
hospital and quarantined a 30-year-old West African
woman who showed symptoms consistent with the
deadly Ebola disease.
Dozens of other visitors and staff at a Berlin
employment office building were also stopped from
leaving for several hours as emergency services
sealed off part of the street.
The mass-circulation Bild daily said the woman had
fainted, that she hailed from Nigeria and that she
said later that she had recently been in contact with
people infected with Ebola.
Several people who had been with the woman
inside the building in the northeastern district of
Prenzlauer Berg were later also taken to hospital
for testing.
Berlin fire department spokesman Rolf Erbe said
that because the patient came from “an area
affected by a highly contagious disease, we took
these precautions.”
He said the testing in the city’s Charite hospital
would take some time.
“The patient was isolated inside the ambulance, the
staff took the appropriate protective measures. An
emergency medic, the public health officer, arrived
and the necessary precautions were taken,” he
added.
West Africa’s Ebola epidemic, which has hit four
nations since it broke out in Guinea early this year,
is by far the deadliest since the virus was
discovered four decades ago in what is now the
Democratic Republic of Congo.
The UN World Health Organization said Tuesday the
Ebola virus had killed 84 people in just three days,
bringing the global death toll to 1,229, while
confirmed, probable and suspect infections rose to
2,240.
www.vanguardngr.com/2014/08/germany-quarantines-suspected-nigerian-ebola-patient/