FREETOWN: Two doctors have died on the same day after contracting Ebola in Sierra Leone, the government said yesterday, bringing to nine the number of medics killed by the virus.
They are among hundreds of healthcare workers to die treating patients infected in the deadly outbreak, which appears to be stabilising in Guinea and Liberia but is still spreading at an alarming rate in Sierra Leone.
“We lost two doctors in one day,” health ministry spokesman Jonathan Abass Kamara said and added that Friday’s deaths had come as “a great shock to the ministry”. “These were eminent professionals who were greatly involved in the fight against Ebola and their services will be greatly missed,” Kamara said.
It was not immediately clear how either had contracted the disease, or if they were involved directly in the treatment of Ebola patients.
Thomas Rogers, a surgeon at the Connaught Hospital, the main referral unit in the capital Freetown, was being treated at the British-run Kerry Town Ebola treatment centre a short drive from the city. He was said to be responding well to treatment when his condition deteriorated dramatically on Friday.
Dauda Koroma died at the Hastings Treatment Centre, also close to the capital, which is run entirely by local medics.
They were the 10th and 11th doctors to contract Ebola since the outbreak spread to Sierra Leone from Guinea in May, and just two have survived.
Sierra Leone has recorded around 1,600 Ebola deaths this year and has registered an worrying recent surge in cases in its western area, including the capital. More than 100 have lost their lives in Sierra Leone, which is still rebuilding from a devastating civil war in the 1990s.
Cuban recovers
Meanwhile, a Cuban doctor who received experimental treatment for Ebola in a Geneva hospital has made a full recovery and left Switzerland to be reunited with his family, the hospital said yesterday.
Felix Baez, 43, was one of 256 Cuban doctors and nurses who went to West Africa to treat patients from the worst outbreak of the virus on record, which has killed more than 6,000 people.
Soon after arriving in Geneva, Baez received the Canadian experimental treatment ZMab, a precursor to the Ebola drug ZMapp, which has been used to treat several U.S. patients.
“Two days afterwards he was already much better,” Geneva’s chief medical officer Jacques-André Romand told Reuters, adding that the same drug had been sent to Rome to treat an Italian doctor battling the virus.
Agencies
