Spanish health worker flown home after possible Ebola contagion

A Spanish health worker with Doctors without Borders (MSF) arrived back in Spain on Friday morning from Mali after being deemed at risk of contagion from the Ebola virus.

MSF confirmed the female health worker accidentally stabbed herself with a needle after injecting an Ebola patient.

She was flown to Madrid, arriving at the military airport of Torrejon, in a specially-equipped aircraft supplied by the MSF and taken to the Carlos III Hospital.

The patient will now be placed under observation, while tests to determine whether or not she is infected are carried out.

However, given that the gestation period of the Ebola virus is between two and 21 days, tests will not be carried out for 48 hours.

Spanish health authorities have stressed that for the moment she is only considered to be at "high risk," of having been infected, while MSF said that so far she was, "not ill and not at risk of infecting anyone."

The Carlos III Hospital is where two Spanish missionaries Miguel Pajares and Manuel Garcia Viejo, both of whom died of the illness, were treated after being flown home from Liberia and Sierra Leone.

The hospital also treated the nursing auxiliary Teresa Romero, who was infected while treating Garcia Viejo. She recovered from the virus and left the hospital on Nov. 5. Endit