{"id":27480,"date":"2026-11-08T03:38:48","date_gmt":"2026-11-08T03:38:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/?p=27480"},"modified":"2026-11-08T03:38:48","modified_gmt":"2026-11-08T03:38:48","slug":"british-doctor-ebola-flown-london-royal-free-hospital","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/2026\/11\/08\/british-doctor-ebola-flown-london-royal-free-hospital\/","title":{"rendered":"Un m\u00e9decin britannique atteint d\u2019Ebola isol\u00e9 au Royal Free de Londres"},"content":{"rendered":"<section aria-labelledby=\"hpd-nfnmyipv-inrtzyj-hlesdml-zofjqh\" class=\"auk-zvimcvi-inrtzyj\" lang=\"en\">\n<h2 id=\"hpd-nfnmyipv-inrtzyj-hlesdml-zofjqh\">In brief<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>A British doctor infected with Ebola in DR Congo has been evacuated to the UK and is in isolation at the Royal Free Hospital.<\/li>\n<li>UKHSA says the risk to the public remains low.<\/li>\n<li>The DR Congo outbreak has passed 10,000 confirmed cases and more than 5,000 deaths.<\/li>\n<li>No approved vaccine exists for the Bundibugyo variant driving it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/section>\n<p>A British doctor who tested positive for Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been flown back to the UK and taken to a specialist infectious diseases unit in London, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/cqj34d3l0zlmo?at_medium=RSS&amp;at_campaign=rss\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">the BBC<\/a> reported. He has not been identified.<\/p>\n<h2>A convoy from RAF Northolt to north London<\/h2>\n<p>The aircraft carrying the man landed at RAF Northolt on Thursday. He was subsequently transferred to the Royal Free Hospital, in the north of London. According to the Department of Health, he travelled on a medical evacuation flight arranged jointly by the British and Congolese governments together with their international health partners.<\/p>\n<p>The transfer was carried out on a large scale. A trio of large police vans drove at the front and at the back of the convoy, with two ambulances and a support car sandwiched between them. Traffic was halted, and officers got out of the vans to keep members of the public at a distance as the vehicles arrived at the hospital.<\/p>\n<p>The man is receiving care in what the department described as a \u201chighly specialised\u201d isolation unit. Dr Renu Bindra, who is deputy director of the All Hazards Public Health Response team at the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), stated that there are \u201cwell-established procedures for dealing with cases like this\u201d. She also said the danger to the public stays low.<\/p>\n<h2>A rare event for the UK<\/h2>\n<p>No British national had previously been confirmed as infected with Ebola during the present outbreak in DR Congo, which makes this the first such case. The Royal Free has experience with these patients: it successfully treated three health workers who were evacuated following the West Africa outbreak of 2014 and 2015.<\/p>\n<table>\n<thead>\n<tr>\n<th>Period<\/th>\n<th>Confirmed UK case<\/th>\n<th>Outcome<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td>1976<\/td>\n<td>Laboratory incident<\/td>\n<td>No death<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>2014 to 2015<\/td>\n<td>Three health workers responding to the West Africa outbreak<\/td>\n<td>No death<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>Those four cases are the only ones ever confirmed in the UK.<\/p>\n<h2>The scale of the DR Congo outbreak<\/h2>\n<p>The outbreak began in May and has grown into the second deadliest on record, behind the West Africa epidemic of the 2010s.<\/p>\n<div class=\"auk-kmrcibp\">\n<div class=\"auk-fsnsbv\"><strong class=\"auk-fsnsbv__fvtkh\">10,000+<\/strong><span class=\"auk-fsnsbv__ppkniutc\">confirmed cases since May<\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"auk-fsnsbv\"><strong class=\"auk-fsnsbv__fvtkh\">5,000+<\/strong><span class=\"auk-fsnsbv__ppkniutc\">deaths so far<\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"auk-fsnsbv\"><strong class=\"auk-fsnsbv__fvtkh\">48.6<span class=\"auk-fsnsbv__wmbpnjn\">%<\/span><\/strong><span class=\"auk-fsnsbv__ppkniutc\">fatality rate reported at the end of last month<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>The virus has spread beyond DR Congo, and Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda have also had confirmed cases.<\/p>\n<h2>How Ebola spreads, and why a vaccine is missing<\/h2>\n<p>Ebola is transmitted between people when they touch the bodily fluids of someone infected, for instance blood or vomit. Vomiting and diarrhoea mark the early symptoms, and the disease can advance towards internal bleeding and organ failure.<\/p>\n<p>The Bundibugyo variant is behind the current outbreak, and no approved vaccine exists for it. According to the World Health Organization, experts have advised that two candidate vaccines be added to a clinical trial already under way. One was created by the University of Oxford with the Serum Institute of India, and the other by Moderna. Both will be included once Congolese health authorities give their approval, marking the first time that jabs designed specifically against Bundibugyo are tested while an outbreak is ongoing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"media-credit auk-gogcn-ertkm\" data-provider=\"pexels\"><small>Photo: jason hu \/ <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pexels.com\/photo\/empty-conference-room-with-a-table-and-chairs-22718136\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Pexels<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A doctor who tested positive in DR Congo is now in a specialist unit at the Royal Free, the hospital that treated three Ebola patients a decade ago.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":27482,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[1325,1323,1320,679,1322,1321,1324],"class_list":["post-27480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-bundibugyo","tag-dr-congo","tag-ebola","tag-public-health","tag-royal-free-hospital","tag-uk","tag-ukhsa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27480"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27481,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27480\/revisions\/27481"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}