An aid worker with Médecins Sans Frontières who contracted Ebola while working in Congo arrived in the Netherlands late on Thursday night on a special medical flight and was transferred to a high-level isolation unit at Leiden University Medical Center.
The evacuation comes as the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s outbreak has surpassed 9,000 confirmed cases and caused more than 4,300 deaths, according to government figures. Efforts to contain transmission are faltering amid protests by health workers and military action at an Ebola-hit camp.
Congo announced the outbreak on May 15. It was caused by the rare Bundibugyo virus, for which there is no known treatment or vaccine.
On Thursday, the health ministry said 4,018 people had died among 8,300 confirmed cases, a death toll representing nearly half of those cases. Authorities have reported more than 4,000 deaths overall.
The recorded weekly toll had fallen from around 850 cases and 470 deaths in mid-July to an average of 490 cases and 230 deaths in September.
In Bunia, the capital of northeastern Ituri province, health workers gathered to seek wages they said were owed to them. Surveillance team members were among the protesters. Their job is to identify people exposed to infected patients.
They held placards reading 'No money, no data!' and 'No payment for months.'
Earlier this week, soldiers searching for weapons burned an Ebola-hit camp in Kigonze, on the outskirts of Bunia. The camp housed a transit centre for infected patients, and 19,000 people were forced to flee.
More than 50 health workers have died after contracting the virus during the response.
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