Cuban Doctor Infected With Ebola to Be Treated in Switzerland
Nov. 19 (Bloomberg) — A Cuban doctor infected with Ebola while working in a Sierra Leone hospital is being flown to Switzerland for treatment.
Felix Sarria, an internal medicine specialist, had been working at the Kerry Town Ebola treatment center, according to Sidie Tunis, a spokesman for the Sierra Leone Health Ministry. The doctor had a high fever and tested positive for Ebola on Nov. 17, Tunis said. Sarria will be treated at Geneva University Hospital, Switzerland’s Federal Office of Public Health said in a statement on its website.
Health workers such as Sarria are the most at risk of getting the disease because they can more easily come into contact with infected bodily fluids. Ebola has killed more than half of the approximately 500 physicians who have contracted the illness in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea since December.
The World Health Organization arranged for Sarria to be flown to Geneva, Tunis said.
A physician infected with the Ebola virus died two days ago at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha after being evacuated from Sierra Leone. There is no approved drug to cure the disease and severely ill patients require intensive supportive care. They are frequently dehydrated and need intravenous fluids or oral rehydration with solutions that contain electrolytes. Other treatments include experimental drugs and receiving blood from an Ebola survivor.
To contact the reporters on this story: David Wainer in Tel Aviv at dwainer3@bloomberg.net; Silas Gbandia in Johannesburg at sgbandia@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Phil Serafino at pserafino@bloomberg.net David Risser, Thomas Mulier
