A banner that reads ‘Hands off the Spallanzani’ is pictured on the gate of the Lazzaro Spallanzani infectious diseases institute in Rome yesterday. An Italian doctor who contracted Ebola while working in Sierra Leone is being flown to Italy, to be treated in the Spallanzani hospital, the health ministry in Rome said yesterday.


AFP/Rome

An Italian doctor has contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone and is being flown back to Rome for specialist treatment, the health ministry said yesterday.
The ministry said the doctor, the first Italian to contract the disease, would likely arrive in Rome early today and be hospitalised at the Lazzaro Spallanzani national institute for infectious diseases.
The doctor was working for the charity Emergency at a clinic for Ebola victims when he contracted the disease, which has killed more than 5,000 people in its latest outbreak in west Africa.
“We can reassure his family that the doctor is feeling well,” Health Minister Beatrice Lorenzin said in a statement. “He did not have a fever or other symptoms during the night and this morning he had his breakfast.”
The charity said the doctor had developed some unspecified Ebola symptoms but was in a “good general condition”.
The more serious symptoms of Ebola can take weeks to develop.
The World Health Organisation has reported a fatality rate of 70% in the current outbreak, the worst ever.
But the handful of Western health workers who contracted the disease and been quickly evacuated have so far all survived.
It has been a different story for local healthcare workers with 337 having died, according to WHO figures.
The disease can only be spread through direct contact with bodily fluids of an infected parent. Sweating as a result of fever and vomiting are common amongst patients, putting nurses and doctors treating them at risk.
Emergency said all its staff in Sierra Leone had been trained in the meticulous hygiene measures required to avoid contamination.
“However no healthcare in such a serious epidemic can be considered completely risk-free,” it said in a statement. “The situation in Sierra Leone is alarming: the epidemic is still widening with 100 new cases a day. According to the WHO there are more than 5,000 people with Ebola in the country but the real figures could be much higher.”