UN Ebola medic dies despite ‘intensive procedures’

A UNITED Nations medical worker infected with Ebola in Liberia has died despite “intensive medical procedures,” a German hospital said.

The unnamed UN worker died at Leipzigs St Georg hospital. Picture: Getty

The St Georg hospital in Leipzig yesterday said the unnamed 56-year-old man died overnight of the infection.

The man tested positive for Ebola on 6 October, prompting Liberia’s UN peacekeeping mission to place 41 staff members who had possibly been in contact with him under “close medical observation”.

He arrived in Leipzig for treatment on 9 October. The hospital’s chief executive, Dr Iris Minde, said at the time that there was no risk of infection for other patients, relatives, visitors or the public. The man was kept in a secure isolation ward equipped with negative pressure rooms that are hermetically sealed and can only be accessed through a number of airlocks.

The Ebola patient was the third to be flown to Germany for treatment. The first, a Senegalese man infected with Ebola while working for the World Health Organisation in Sierra Leone, was brought to a Hamburg hospital in late August for treatment. The man was released on 3 October after recovering and returned to his home country, the hospital said.

Another patient, a Ugandan man who worked for an Italian aid group in West Africa, is undergoing treatment in a Frankfurt hospital.

In Spain yesterday, nurses blew toy horns outside Madrid’s Carlos III Hospital where Teresa Romero, the nursing assistant who contracted Ebola looking after a priest, is being treated.

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