The French Ministry of Social Affairs and Health on Wednesday confirmed its first case of Ebola from the outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
The patient is reportedly a humanitarian aid doctor who recently returned from a mission to the outbreak region.
According to a statement from the health ministry, the doctor “boarded a commercial flight from Kinshasa while virtually asymptomatic, experiencing only headaches.”
The doctor’s condition “deteriorated slightly during the flight,” so he was rushed into home quarantine upon arriving in France, and was then transferred securely to a hospital isolation ward where he was said to be in stable condition.
The ministry said the risk to the French population from the Ebola outbreak remained “very low” because the ministry has established a “dedicated monitoring system” for doctors and other aid workers returning from the DRC.
Wednesday’s report from the French health ministry was the second confirmed Ebola case in Europe from the current outbreak. The first was American doctor Peter Stafford, who tested positive for Ebola after doing medical missionary work in the Congo, and was evacuated to a special isolation ward in Germany for treatment in mid-May.
Stafford’s wife Rebekah, also a doctor, and their four children were housed as “high-risk contacts” while Peter Stafford underwent treatment at Charite University Hospital in Berlin. The entire family was discharged from the hospital in early June, and they returned to the United States on June 16.
“I am filled with gratitude to God for preserving my life, to all those who prayed on my behalf, and to the many medical providers who cared for me. I am feeling well and thankful to be reunited with Rebekah and the kids,” Stafford said upon his return to American soil.
“Our prayers continue for those in Congo who are facing this devastating epidemic and for the ongoing efforts to control the disease,” he added. The Christian missionary group Stafford works for, named Serge, remains involved in fighting the Ebola outbreak.
The DRC health ministry counted 1,048 confirmed Ebola cases in its latest update on Tuesday, with 267 deaths, 112 recoveries, and 371 patients under care. The ministry said, “Surveillance efforts are intensifying,” and the success rate for contact tracing has improved to 70.8 percent.
The World Health Organization (W.H.O.) said on Tuesday that the Ebola Bundibugyo outbreak has “the largest number of confirmed cases in the first month of an Ebola disease outbreak in Africa.”
PBS on Wednesday paid a visit to Mongbwalu, the mining town in the DRC’s Ituri province that is believed to have originated the Bundibugyo outbreak, although epidemiologists have yet to confirm this hypothesis. Residents of the town, which has a population of about 130,000, said it took some time for them to realize a growing wave of sickness and death was caused by Ebola.
Community leader Joseph Mute noted that Mongbwalu’s population of itinerant, poverty-stricken gold miners get sick all the time, for a variety of reasons, including reactions to toxic chemicals employed in the mining process.
The residents also have a predilection for believing in supernatural events, as in the sad tale of locals who believed the taboo burning of an empty coffin unleashed a curse on the town — rather than Ebola spreading from the body of the priest who was transported in the coffin.
Mute said more than 50 people in Mongbwalu perished from Ebola-like symptoms before the DRC government officially declared the outbreak on May 15. Even with such a terrible death toll, the locals are resistant to medical treatment. Some still believe in supernatural causes, while others fear health workers are deliberately spreading a deadly disease to thin out their ranks.