Tom PowellA SPANISH nurse has become the first person outside of West Africa to contract the deadly Ebola virus.
The virus has so far killed more than 3,400 people, with the World Health Organization labeling the outbreak an international medical emergency.
The female nurse had been working at Madrid’s La Paz-Carlos III hospital, where the two Spanish priests who were flown home from Africa with the virus were treated.
Miguel Pajares, 75, was infected with ebola in Liberia and died at the hospital on 12 August.
While Manuel Garcia Viejo, 69, was flown home from Sierra Leone and died at the same hospital on 25 September.
Spain’s health minister, Ana Mato, announced that an emergency protocol has been put in place and authorities are working to establish the source of the contagion at the Madrid hospital.
All 30 medical staff who treated the two priests are now being monitored, as well as the nurse’s husband.
The infected nurse began to complain of a fever on 30 September, but did not go to hospital until Sunday.
The assistant nurse, who is married without children, is currently being treated in isolation at a different hospital in a southern Madrid suburb.
Health authorities are attempting to find all of the people she could have come in contact with since she contracted the disease.
She is reported to be in a stable condition.
There have been Ebola scares in Alicante and Malaga, but both cases were given the all clear after an initial warning.
