US Ebola patient from DR Congo arrives in Germany for treatment

A US doctor infected with Ebola while working in the Democratic Republic of Congo during the country’s deadly current outbreak has been admitted to a high-security isolation unit at a hospital in Germany, health officials said.

The patient, identified as medical missionary Dr Peter Stafford, reached Germany overnight after the United States asked Berlin to assist with his treatment.

“I can confirm that the US citizen who was infected with the Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been admitted to the special isolation unit at the Charite” hospital in Berlin, a health ministry spokeswoman said.

The ministry also said the doctor’s family would be admitted to a hospital in Germany, though officials did not say whether any of them were showing symptoms.

It added that “they will also be taken to the special isolation ward at the Charite hospital in Berlin”.

Earlier, the ministry had declined to give details about the doctor’s condition.

When he arrived in Germany, Dr Stafford got off the plane wearing a white protective suit and mask before being assisted into an ambulance by workers in full protective gear, Bild newspaper reported.

Bild said Dr Stafford was flown to Berlin with six other people he had been in contact with, believed to include members of his family, and was then taken to hospital in a convoy of vehicles.

The American doctor was taken to a Berlin hospital after landing in Germany

Dr Stafford lives in the DRC with his wife Rebekah, who is also a doctor, and their four young children, according to the Christian missionary organisation Serge.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Monday that the American had contracted the virus after exposure linked “to their work” in the DRC and had tested positive late Sunday.

Serge said Dr Stafford was exposed while caring for patients at Nyankunde hospital, where he has worked since 2023.

The World Health Organization has declared the Ebola outbreak in the DRC an international health emergency after it killed almost 140 people and produced 600 suspected cases.

Even so, the chair of the WHO’s emergency committee said the outbreak has not crossed the threshold required to be classified as a pandemic.

“The current situation and criteria for a public health emergency of international concern have been met, and we agree that the current situation does not satisfy the criteria for a pandemic emergency,” Lucille Blumberg told reporters, speaking from South Africa.

The WHO said the risk posed by the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Ebola outbreak remained high nationally and across the region, but low at the global level.

The WHO assesses “the risk of the epidemic as high at the national and regional levels and low at the global level,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a press conference at the UN health agency’s headquarters in Geneva.

Congo’s Ebola responders warn of medicine shortages

At the same time, frontline workers battling the Democratic Republic of Congo’s 17th Ebola outbreak say even basic supplies are in short supply — from pain medication and face masks to motorbikes needed for contact tracing — making it harder to contain the disease.

Aid organisations are racing to move supplies into Ituri, the conflict-hit province where the outbreak began.

Chronic underinvestment in public health infrastructure has long plagued Ituri, though some humanitarian groups say the present shortages have also been worsened by cuts to foreign aid, including the dismantling of USAID last year.

“Funding cuts have left the region dangerously exposed,” said Heather Reoch Kerr, Congo country director for the International Rescue Committee.

“Certain activities previously supported by donor funding, including the provision of PPE kits to health facilities, have been significantly reduced, and today many facilities in affected areas are operating without basic protective supplies.”