Kansas hospital monitoring patient for possible Ebola infection

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[May 30, 2015]  By Carey Gillam

(Reuters) - The University of Kansas Hospital said on Friday it was monitoring a patient for a possible Ebola infection after he returned from the West African nation of Sierra Leone and developed a fever.

"The patient is extremely low risk. It's just the fever that tipped the balance," Dr. Lee Norman at University of Kansas Hospital in Kansas City, Kansas, told a news conference.

Norman said the male patient in his early 30s, who lives in the Kansas City metropolitan area, had been visiting family in Sierra Leone and had stayed in a hotel there.

The patient, who returned home recently, had no fever when traveling but developed one and went to the emergency room, Norman said.

The hospital said the patient is not a medical care worker and has no history of being in contact with someone with Ebola, adding he most likely was infected with malaria instead. He was being tested for Ebola, malaria and other infectious diseases. Test results were due back in a day or two, it added.

The man was "doing fine" but still had a fever. The hospital was investigating who else the man might have been in contact with.

More than 11,000 people have lost their lives in the Ebola outbreak in West Africa since the first reported case in March 2014, with Liberia suffering the most deaths, according to the World Health Organization. That country was earlier this month declared Ebola-free.

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Only a handful of cases have been seen outside West Africa, in the United States, Spain and Britain.

(Reporting by Carey Gillam in Kansas City, Missouri; Writing by Eric M. Johnson; Editing by Sandra Maler)

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