Germany takes in third Ebola patient for treatment

Television news crews working in front of the UKE university hospital in Hamburg, northern Germany, where a patient infected with the Ebola virus had been brought after landing at the airport on Aug 27, 2014. A third UN employee infected with th
Television news crews working in front of the UKE university hospital in Hamburg, northern Germany, where a patient infected with the Ebola virus had been brought after landing at the airport on Aug 27, 2014. A third UN employee infected with the deadly Ebola virus in West Africa, a Sudanese doctor, arrived for treatment in Germany on Thursday from Liberia, local health officials said. -- PHOTO: AFP

BERLIN (AFP) - A third UN employee infected with the deadly Ebola virus in West Africa, a Sudanese doctor, arrived for treatment in Germany on Thursday from Liberia, local health officials said.

"He is being treated at a clinic in Leipzig," one of seven health centres in Germany specialised in highly infectious diseases, Ralph Schreiber, a health ministry spokesman in the eastern state of Saxony, said.

The world's largest outbreak of Ebola has killed 3,865 people out of 8,033 infected so far this year, mainly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, according to the latest count of the UN's World Health Organization.

The United States has stepped up airport screenings as the spillover of the virus - with the first diagnosis in the US and the first case of infection in Spain - has raised fears of contagion in the West.

Germany has previously treated two WHO employees infected with Ebola in Sierra Leone - a Senegalese expert who was treated in Hamburg and released on October 4, and a Ugandan doctor now being treated in Frankfurt.

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