In this photo provided by the Geneva University Hospital, Cuban doctor Felix Baez Sarria, who contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone, arrives at the hospital on Friday. (Julien Gregorio/Geneva University Hospital/Associated Press)
A Cuban doctor who contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone arrived in Switzerland for treatment and was able to walk off the transport plane, a Geneva medical official said Friday.
Felix Baez Sarria arrived on a flight overnight and was transported in a specially outfitted ambulance with a police escort to Geneva University Hospital.
Geneva canton (state) Chief Medical Officer Dr. Jacques-Andre Romand told The Associated Press the 43-year-old Baez wore a protective suit and mask as he got off the plane and climbed onto a gurney before boarding the ambulance.
Romand said doctors will decide on a treatment regime for Baez, which could include experimental drugs.
“As soon as we know what is going on, if there is medication that will help him we will give it to him,” Romand said.
Baez, a member of the 165-person medical team Cuba sent to Sierra, caught the disease when he rushed to help a patient who was falling over. His treatment in Switzerland was organized through the WHO.
Ebola is spread through direct contact with the bodily fluids of sick patients — including blood, feces and urine. Health workers have been particularly vulnerable to contracting the virus.
Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone have been the hardest hit in the epidemic that has sickened more than 15,100 people since spring and caused more than 5,400 deaths, according to World Health Organization figures.
On Friday, French President Francois Hollande announced he would travel to Guinea next week to help put in place efforts to counter the virus. He is the first non-African head of state to visit the area since the outbreak started.
France plans to send mobile health clinics to Guinea and pledged 170 million euros ($211 million) to help fight the disease.
Also on Friday, Doctors Without Borders flew one of its Spanish health care workers home from Mali after she accidentally pricked herself with a needle used on a person suffering from Ebola.
Spanish Health Ministry spokesman Fernando Simon said the woman has not shown any symptoms but is being treated as a “high-risk” case.
Congolese Ebola outbreak declared over
Meanwhile, the WHO declared on Friday that an outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo was over after no people showed symptoms for two incubation periods since the last case.
The outbreak, the seventh in the former Zaire since the virus was identified there in 1976, was separate from the one spreading in West Africa.
There were 49 deaths out of 66 people infected in the remote northwestern Equateur province during the three-month outbreak, Congolese authorities said last week. A WHO spokesman confirmed the figures.
Two maximum incubation periods of 21 days each must pass with no new cases being detected before the United Nations health agency can declare that an outbreak is finished.
“Having reached that 42-day mark, the Democratic Republic of Congo is now considered free of Ebola transmission,” the WHO said in a statement.
“WHO commends the Democratic Republic of Congo’s strong leadership and effective coordination of the response that included rapidly mobilizing an expert response team to Jeera County, identifying and monitoring contacts and organizing safe burials,” the WHO said.
