British Doctor With Ebola Arrives in London for Treatment in Royal Free Hospital Isolation Unit
LONDON — A British doctor who contracted Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo arrived in Britain on Thursday, November 5, and is being treated in a highly specialised isolation unit at the Royal Free Hospital in north London. A medical evacuation flight landed at RAF Northolt on Thursday, before a convoy of three large police vehicles, two ambulances and a support vehicle took the patient to the hospital. The patient's name has not been disclosed, and the BBC did not state the patient's condition.
The Department of Health confirmed the evacuation was a joint operation by the United Kingdom, the government of the DR Congo and international health partners. It is the first confirmed case involving a British national in the current outbreak. Dr Renu Bindra, deputy director of the UK Health Security Agency's All Hazards Public Health Response team, said the UK has well-established procedures for dealing with cases like this and the risk to the public remains low.
The outbreak in the DR Congo, declared on May 15, is the second-largest on record, after the West African outbreak of the 2010s; by the end of last month, it had caused more than 10,000 confirmed cases and more than 5,000 deaths, with a case fatality rate of 48.6 percent. Britain has previously recorded only four confirmed Ebola cases — one in a 1976 laboratory accident and three health workers who responded to the West African outbreak in 2014–2015 — with no deaths; the Royal Free Hospital successfully treated the three workers evacuated in 2014–2015.
The virus in this outbreak is the Bundibugyo strain, for which there is no approved vaccine; the World Health Organization said experts had advised adding two candidate vaccines to an ongoing clinical trial, developed by the University of Oxford with the Serum Institute of India and by Moderna, pending approval from the DR Congo health authorities — the first time vaccines designed specifically against the Bundibugyo virus would be tested during an outbreak. Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda have also confirmed cases since the outbreak began.
This outlet reported at 03:05 that the health worker had been infected and would be evacuated to Britain; this report covers only the new development — the arrival and admission to hospital.
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Source: UK Department of Health and Social Care
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：位于伦敦汉普斯特德的皇家自由医院。Geograph，Wikimedia Commons，CC BY-SA 2.0。 / Photo: The Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, London. Geograph, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.
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- 2026-11-05British Doctor With Ebola Arrives in London for Treatment in Royal Free Hospital Isolation UnitThis story
