Ebola false alarm in France
News website France3 reported that emergency services boarded a plane that arrived in Montpellier at 10:15 am today to investigate reports two passengers suffering sickness and fever had been infected with the Ebola virus.
According to the paper no signs of fever were detected in either passenger who were returning to France from Nigeria and Burkina Faso, respectively, according to national newspaper Le Figaro.
The Montpellier false alarm follows reports that Air France flight crews are refusing to board planes bound for Guinea, Sierra-Leone - two of the West African countries hit hardest by Ebola.
ZMapp treatment
The only person in Europe to have been killed by Ebola during the current outbreak is Spanish priest Miguel Pajares who passed away in hospital in Madrid earlier this month according to Reuters.
Pajares, who was 75 years old, contracted Ebola in Liberia where he was working for a non-governmental aid organisation.
He was airlifted to Spain on August 7 and – according to the report - was one of the first patients to be treated with Mapp Biopharmaceuticals’ antibody cocktail, ZMapp.
The drug is one of several candidate therapies being used to try and treat Ebola victims and contain the spread of the virus.
According to a World Health Organisation (WHO) announcement this week the condition of two doctors and a nurse treated with ZMapp in Liberia have improved.
