BERLIN
A Ugandan doctor who became infected with Ebola while working in Sierra Leone has been brought to Frankfurt on Friday morning for medical treatment.
“The patient is in a very serious but stable condition,” Timo Wolf, an infectious disease specialist at the University Hospital Frankfurt told reporters on Friday.
“There is reasonable hope that the patient can survive this disease,” Wolf said, adding that the next few days will be critical.
The Ugandan doctor is being treated at a special isolation unit at University Hospital Frankfurt and team of 10 doctors and nurses will provide the patient with basic care, officials from the hospital said.
Doctors underlined that currently the use of experimental drugs was not planned as part of the treatment.
The patient was working for an Italian aid organization in Sierra Leone when he was infected with the virus and the organization requested help from the World Health Organization (WHO) for medical treatment in Germany, officials said.
The Ugandan doctor is the second patient who is currently receiving treatment in Germany for Ebola.
In late August, a patient infected with Ebola in Senegal was brought to University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf for medical treatment.
In recent months, Ebola – a contagious disease for which there is no known cure – has killed at least 3,330 people in West Africa according to the latest figures from the World Health Organization.
Ebola, a tropical fever that first appeared in 1976 in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, can be transmitted to humans from wild animals.
It can also reportedly spread through contact with the body fluids of infected persons or of those who have died from the virus.
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