British Ebola Patient On Flight Back To UK

[Jazzy]

A British healthcare worker who has tested positive for ebola has left Sierra Leone on a Royal Air Force jet bound for the UK.

The unnamed man is being flown to RAF Northolt near Heathrow from where he will be taken to an isolation unit at the Royal Free Hospital in north London. The flight on a specially equipped C17 plane will take about eight hours.

He is understood to have been a volunteer at a clinic in the country's Kenema district.

Sky's Enda Brady said: "Inside that aircraft will be an air transport isolator, a piece of equipment that has been used several times in the past few years. The patient will effectively be placed inside a bubble."

The Royal Free has the UK's only high-level isolation unit comprising of a specially designed tent with controlled ventilation, which has been on standby since the latest outbreak.

The Department of Health said: "The UK has well-established and practised infection control procedures for dealing with cases of imported infectious disease.

"These will be strictly followed to minimise the risk of transmission while the patient is in transit and receiving treatment at the Royal Free Hospital."

It is the first confirmed case of a British person catching the tropical infection, which kills up to 90% of those who contract it.

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Hopefully the Royal Free Hospital is fully prepared to care to this patient.