LONDON: A British medical worker was flown home from West Africa on Sunday after becoming the first Briton infected in an Ebola epidemic, and a separate new outbreak of the disease was detected in Democratic Republic of Congo.
A specially adapted Royal Air Force cargo plane picked up the male healthcare worker in Sierra Leone on Sunday after British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond authorised his repatriation for treatment.
The Department of Health said the patient whose identity has not been disclosed was "not currently seriously unwell". The man will be transported to an isolation unit at the Royal Free Hospital in London.
The hemorrhagic fever has killed at least 1,427 people, mostly in Sierra Leone, Liberia and neighbouring Guinea, the deadliest outbreak of the disease to date. The disease also has a toehold in Nigeria, where it has killed five people.
In Democratic Republic of Congo, Health Minister Felix Kabange Numbi said an Ebola outbreak had been confirmed in the remote northern Equateur province 1,200 km (750 miles) from the capital Kinshasa but it was a different strain of the virus from the West African one.
There have been six outbreaks of Ebola in Democratic Republic of Congo since the disease was discovered there in 1976, with a total of more than 760 deaths.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has said that more than 225 health workers have fallen ill and nearly 130 have lost their lives to Ebola since the West African outbreak was detected in the jungles of southeast Guinea in March.
The Boeing C-17 plane carrying the British medic left the Sierra Leonean capital Freetown at around 1250 GMT. Television footage showed the plane arriving at RAF Northolt air base in Britain after a flight of just over 7 hours. An ambulance backed up to the plane to receive the patient.
Britain's Deputy Chief Medical Officer John Watson said final approval for the evacuation was given by a team of physicians who had travelled to Freetown on the plane.
"We understand that this patient, during the course of the work that he was carrying out, was exposed about a week ago and became unwell two or three days ago," Watson told Sky News.
The Royal Free Hospital has Britain's only high-level isolation unit for treatment of infectious diseases, as well as a team of specially trained staff.
Paul Cosford, director for health protection at state body Public Health England, said strict protective measures were being taken to minimise the risk of transmission when transporting and treating the individual in Britain.
Two US doctors, who contracted Ebola in Liberia and were evacuated to the United States, were discharged from hospital last week after receiving treatment with an experimental drug, ZMapp. It was not clear what role it played in their recovery.
Its US-based manufacturer, Mapp Biopharmaceutical, has said limited supplies of the drug have already been exhausted after it was used to treat three African doctors in Liberia.
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