UK Evacuates British Ebola Patient

Nation's first victim of virus was health worker in Sierra Leone
By Polly Davis Doig,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 24, 2014 8:38 AM CDT
UK Evacuates British Ebola Patient
A security guard stands outside Connaught Hospital, where a leading doctor died from Ebola, in Freetown, Sierra Leone, in this Aug. 15, 2014, file photo.   (AP Photo/Michael Duff)

An RAF aircraft has left Sierra Leone today carrying a British citizen infected with Ebola, bound for treatment in an isolation unit in London's Royal Free Hospital, reports the BBC. London is confirming that a male patient was indeed infected, notes the AP; he was a volunteer at a clinic in the nation's Kenema district, which has been especially hard hit by the outbreak. There have been upward of 300 infections in Kenema, about a third of all cases in Sierra Leone, which has recorded almost 400 deaths from Ebola. The British patient, the nation's first, is "not currently seriously unwell," says a rep for the UK health department. (More Ebola stories.)

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