Cuban doctor free of Ebola and to be released soon: media

[December 06, 2014]  HAVANA (Reuters) - A Cuban doctor who contracted Ebola while treating patients in Sierra Leone will be released from a Geneva hospital soon and return to Cuba after doctors found he was free of the virus, official media reported on Friday.

Felix Baez, 43, is one of 256 Cuban doctors and nurses who have gone to West Africa to treat patients from the worst Ebola outbreak on record, which has killed more than 6,000 people. The Cuban commitment has won broad wide international praise for the poor, Caribbean island.

"Tests confirmed the virus has disappeared from his body fluids and he will soon be released. Once this happens, Dr. Felix Baez Sarria will return to Cuba," the Communist Party newspaper Granma said, citing a Health Ministry statement.

Cuban state television and the official news agency Prensa Latina also cited Health Ministry officials saying the same thing. They did not give a date for when Baez would be released.

Since being taken from Freetown to Geneva's University Hospital on Nov. 20, Baez has been treated in a special room in an isolated area of the hospital by a team of five specialists employing strict safety protocols. Some 165 Cuban doctors and nurses have gone to Sierra Leone for six-month missions, with another 53 in Liberia and 38 in Guinea.

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; Editing by James Dalgleish and Alan Crosby)

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