US doctor infected with Ebola in Congo flown to Germany for treatment, family placed in isolation

Nevin Al Sukari - Sana'a - A visitor walks at the entrance of a hospital in Rwampara, Uganda. Berlin’s Charité hospital admitted a US Ebola patient and his family after a request from US authorities. — AFP pic

BERLIN, May 21 — A US doctor who contracted Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been admitted to a German hospital that will also admit his family as contact cases, health officials told AFP yesterday.

The patient — named as medical missionary Dr Peter Stafford, 39 — arrived in Germany in the early hours of yesterday, after the United States requested Berlin’s help.

Stafford’s wife and four young children will also be admitted to the isolation ward of Berlin’s Charite hospital, the health ministry said in a statement.

“After a US citizen infected with Ebola arrived in Berlin this morning for treatment, US authorities have requested assistance in admitting his family members,” the ministry said.

In an update, the ministry said his wife and all four of their children would be taken to the special isolation ward at the hospital.

The ministry declined to comment on Stafford’s condition and said the family members were being treated as contact cases.

Stafford lives in the DRC with his wife Rebekah, also a doctor, and their children, according to the Christian missionary organisation Serge.

The missionary group said the Stafford family as well as another doctor who had also treated Ebola patients, Patrick LaRochelle, had departed the DRC “and are en route to other locations where they can be monitored in close proximity to expert care if needed”.

Serge said Stafford was exposed while treating patients before the deadly outbreak was identified at a hospital in Bunia in DRC, where he had worked since 2023.

“Dr Rebekah Stafford and Dr Patrick LaRochelle had been potentially exposed by their work at hospitals in Nyankunde and Bunia,” Serge said.

“They have been following established quarantine and monitoring protocols and remain asymptomatic.”

The Bild newspaper reported that the patient arrived in Germany yesterday morning, disembarking from a plane wearing a white protective suit and a mask and was helped into an ambulance by people also wearing protective gear.

The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention had said Monday that the American had contracted the virus following exposure related “to their work” in the DRC and had tested positive late Sunday.

The World Health Organisation has declared the Ebola outbreak in the DRC, which has killed more than 130 people, an international health emergency. — AFP