Britain on Wednesday held a top-level government meeting to discuss the spread of the highly-contagious Ebola virus in West Africa, saying the outbreak was a threat it needed to respond to.
International concern has risen about the virus, which has killed 672 people in West Africa since February, after the first recorded case of the disease in Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria.
Although no cases of Ebola have been found in Britain, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said after the emergency meeting that London was considering extra precautions but was confident it could contain the disease if necessary.
“In terms of the UK the issue is about the possibility of somebody who has contracted the disease in Africa getting sick here,” he said after the meeting, which health experts, scientists and other ministers attended.
“It is not about the disease spreading in the UK because frankly we have different standards of infection control procedure that would make that most unlikely.”
He said that ministers had discussed what additional measures Britain could take to contain the outbreak in West Africa, and what steps needed to be taken in case a British national in the area contracted the disease.
He did not specify what precautions were being considered.
Earlier this month, public health officials issued guidance to hospitals and doctors asking them to look out for possible cases in travellers returning from the affected countries.
An American aid worker infected with Ebola while responding to the outbreak of the deadly virus in Liberia and neighboring African countries is “fighting through it,” her son said on Wednesday.
Jeremy Writebol told NBC’s “Today” show that his mother, missionary Nancy Writebol, is moving around on her own and receiving a lot of fluids as she is treated in isolation.
“She’s working real hard to get through this,” her son said.
Nancy Writebol and another U.S. colleague who contracted Ebola in Liberia, Dr. Kent Brantly, have both been described as stable but suffering from some symptoms of the contagious disease, for which there is no known cure.
The fatality rate of the current outbreak, which has killed at least 672 people, is about 60 percent, health officials said.
Writebol and Brantly were part of a team from two North Carolina-based relief organizations, Samaritan’s Purse and SIM, which on Tuesday said they would evacuate all nonessential personnel from Liberia as Ebola cases there mount.
Ken Isaacs, a vice president at Samaritan’s Purse, told CNN it was believed that a local staff member infected with Ebola came to work with the virus. The staffer has since died.
“We think it was in the scrub-down area where the disease was passed to both Nancy and Kent,” Isaacs said
(Reporting by Michael Holden and William James; Editing by Kate Holton and Andrew Osborn)
