Europe to see more Ebola cases: WHO

PanARMENIAN.Net - Europe will almost inevitably see more cases of the deadly Ebola virus within its borders but the continent is well prepared to control the disease, the World Health Organization's regional director said on Tuesday, Oct 7, according to Reuters.

WHO's European director, Zsuzsanna Jakab, said further such events were "unavoidable".

Spanish health officials said four people had been hospitalized to try and stem any further spread of Ebola there after the nurse became the first person in the world known to have contracted the virus outside of Africa.

"Such imported cases and similar events as have happened in Spain will happen also in the future, most likely," Reuters quoted Jakab as saying in a telephone interview from her Copenhagen office.

"It is quite unavoidable ... that such incidents will happen in the future because of the extensive travel both from Europe to the affected countries and the other way around."

Several countries in the WHO's European region, including France, Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Norway and Spain, have treated patients repatriated after contracting the disease in West Africa, where Ebola has been raging through Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia since March.

Ebola has infected some 7,200 people in West Africa, killing more than 3,400 of them in the largest outbreak of the disease in history. Cases have also been imported into Nigeria, Senegal and the United States.

Jakab said that within Europe, health workers caring for repatriated Ebola patients, as well as their families and close contacts, were most at risk of becoming infected.

"But the most important thing...is that Europe is still at low risk and that the western part of the European region particularly is the best prepared in the world to respond to viral hemorrhagic fevers including Ebola."

Ebola, one of the deadliest diseases known in humans, can have an incubation period of up to 21 days and disease experts say it is only contagious when patients are displaying symptoms such as fever, vomiting and diarrhea.

The infection is passed through direct contact with bodily fluids such as blood, vomit and faeces.