Ebola Outbreak: Spanish Nurse 'First Person to Contract Disease Outside of Africa'

A Spanish nurse who treated an Ebola victim who eventually died of the disease in Madrid has tested positive for the virus.

The nurse is now suspected of being the first person to have contracted the deadly disease outside of West Africa during the current outbreak.

Spanish media reported the nurse has contacted the virus but it has not yet been confirmed by the Spanish health authorities, with doctors awaiting the final results.

She treated priest Manuel Garcia Viejo at a clinic in Madrid before he died of Ebola on 25 September.

Garcia was a medical director of the Hospital Order of San Juan de Dios and was working in the western Sierra Leonean city of Lunsar when he caught the disease. He was flown back to Spain in an isolation chamber and picked up by doctors in full protective biohazard gear.

In August, another Spanish priest, Miguel Pajares, died after contracting the virus in Liberia. Both were members of the San Juan de Dios religious order.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) assured people that the deadly disease is not airborne following recent speculation and the disease can only be contracted via direct contact with bodily fluids of an infected person.

A spokesperson said: "Following recent media reports, the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER) seeks to clarify that Ebola is not an airborne disease.

"At this point in time we have no evidence and do not anticipate that the Ebola virus is mutating to become airborne."

Elsewhere, Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person to have been diagnosed with Ebola in the US, is "fighting for his life" in a hospital in Dallas after contracting the virus in his native Liberia.

The WHO has recorded a death toll of 3,439 out of 7,492 suspected, probable and confirmed cases in the worst Ebola outbreak in history.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) assured people that the deadly disease is not airborne following recent speculation. A spokesperson said: "Following recent media reports, the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER) seeks to clarify that Ebola is not an airborne disease.

"At this point in time we have no evidence and do not anticipate that the Ebola virus is mutating to become airborne.