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A British doctor who contracted Ebola while working on the outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been flown back to the United Kingdom and is being treated in a high-level isolation unit at the Royal Free Hospital in London.
The doctor, whose identity has not been disclosed, tested positive for the virus while working on the response to the outbreak in DR Congo. He was brought home on Thursday on a medical evacuation flight arranged jointly by the British and Congolese governments and their international health partners, the Department of Health and Social Care said. The plane landed at RAF Northolt before a convoy of emergency vehicles transported him to the hospital in Hampstead, north London.
The Royal Free Hospital confirmed the patient is being cared for in its high-level isolation unit, a specialist facility run by a dedicated team of doctors, nurses and laboratory staff. The unit has strict isolation protocols in place to prevent the patient coming into contact with any members of the public.
Dr Renu Bindra, deputy director of the All Hazards Public Health Response team at the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), said: "UKHSA and the NHS have well-established and robust infection prevention and control protocols to limit the risk of onward transmission, and the risk to the wider public remains low." The Department of Health said the risk to the wider UK public from the planned medical evacuation is extremely low.
Ebola does not spread through the air. It is passed on through direct contact with the bodily fluids of a person who is ill with the virus.
The doctor is the first British national to contract Ebola during the current outbreak in DR Congo, and the third person to have tested positive to return to Europe, according to the Associated Press. He had been sent to DR Congo by a humanitarian organisation to help tackle the outbreak, which was declared by the country's health ministry on May 15 and is the second largest on record, with more than 10,000 cases and over 5,000 deaths reported.
On Wednesday, the government confirmed that a British citizen in DR Congo had tested positive for Ebola and said established procedures had been activated. The Royal Free Hospital previously treated three health workers who were evacuated after the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014 and 2015.
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