|
Felix Baez, 43, was one of 256 Cuban doctors and nurses who
went to West Africa to treat patients from the worst outbreak of
the virus on record, which has killed more than 6,000 people.
Soon after arriving in Geneva, Baez received the Canadian
experimental treatment ZMab, a precursor to the Ebola drug
ZMapp, which has been used to treat several U.S. patients.
"Two days afterwards he was already much better," Geneva's chief
medical officer Jacques-André Romand told Reuters, adding that
the same drug had been sent to Rome to treat an Italian doctor
battling the virus.
Baez was hospitalized in Geneva at the request of the World
Health Organization, which is headquartered in the city, after
he contracted the disease in Sierra Leone, one of the countries
that has been worst hit by the outbreak.
Out of 138 health care workers who have caught the disease in
Sierra Leone, 106 have died, a much higher fatality rate than
among health care workers in neighboring Guinea and Liberia, WHO
data published on Wednesday showed.
Two more doctors died in Sierra Leone on Friday, a government
and hospital source said.
Baez, Cuba's first Ebola patient and the first case of the
disease in Switzerland, was treated in isolation in the Geneva
hospital for 16 days. At no time was there any risk of
transmission to the local population, Romand said.
(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay and Tom Miles, editing by Louise
Heavens)
[© 2014 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2014 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
|
