An American aid worker with the Christian charity Samaritan’s Purse who contracted Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has arrived in Germany for treatment, the health ministry in Berlin said Monday, amid warnings that the potentially deadly disease is spreading much faster than official figures suggest.
The American patient reportedly landed in Frankfurt overnight and was transferred to the city’s University Hospital, just weeks after another Ebola-infected U.S. citizen was successfully treated in Germany, officials said.
Evangelist Franklin Graham, president and CEO of Samaritan’s Purse, said the patient was “doing well.”
The patient, identified by Samaritan’s Purse as a man in his 60s, served as a warehouse manager in the DRC rather than directly treating Ebola patients. The organization said he became infected while supporting its humanitarian operations in the outbreak zone.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said the aid worker had been serving in Bunia, the capital of Ituri province, the epicenter of the country’s 17th Ebola outbreak, declared in mid-May. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the patient received clinical care before being safely transferred to Germany for continued treatment.
German officials stressed that the patient poses no danger to the public or other hospital patients, adding that Germany was asked to assist because of its internationally recognized expertise in treating Ebola and the shorter flight time from central Africa.
Another American infected during the current outbreak was treated in Berlin earlier this year and recovered after about two weeks in isolation.
However, hundreds of other patients have died, and the WHO warned Tuesday that the outbreak could be two to four times larger than official figures indicate.
Although authorities have confirmed nearly 2,000 infections and more than 700 deaths, WHO emergencies director Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu said many cases remain undetected.
“The scale of the outbreak is at least two to four times the number of cases that we have found,” he told reporters in Geneva after returning from the DRC.
He added that the current epidemic is already the third-largest Ebola outbreak on record and the fastest-growing ever documented in Africa over a comparable period.
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