News Analysis: Second Italian infected by Ebola virus illustrates rich-poor divide
Xinhua, May 16, 2015 Adjust font size:
The second Italian infected with the deadly Ebola virus - and the first in 2015 - arrived in Italy last week, a male nurse who had been volunteering as part of an Italian aid initiative in Sierra Leone.
Experts said the latest case, which presents minimal risk to the public, shows how the system for stopping the spread of infectious diseases is supposed to work. But it also shows how much more difficult it is to contain the problem in poorer African countries.
The nurse began showing symptoms two days after returning from Sierra Leone, one of the West African countries hit hardest by the Ebola epidemic. The nurse isolated himself in his apartment in his native Sardinia until he could be transported to the infectious disease ward at a local hospital and then transferred to a more specialized unit in Rome aboard a specially equipped Air Force plane.
"Everything worked exactly how it should work," Giuseppe La Torre, from the department of public health and infectious diseases at La Sapienza University in Rome, told Xinhua. "There is little chance that the nurse infected anyone in Italy and he followed procedure exactly as he should have. He should get the care he needs to make a full recovery."
Rezza and other experts say the risks of an outbreak in Italy remain extremely low. There are no direct commercial flights between Italy and the infected parts of West Africa, and Italians traveling in those regions are informed on how to recognize symptoms of the disease and what to do if they appear. Anyone who might have been near the infected party is also monitored.
But the story of the nurse also helps illustrate how infectious a virus like Ebola can be. The first Italian infected by the disease, a doctor - the names of infected parties are not released to the public - was part of the same Sierra Leone aid initiative as the nurse. He was successfully treated at Spallanzani Hospital in Rome and was able to return home after a month.
In an interview with an Italian newspaper, the doctor said he was treated with infusions of blood from Spanish and German colleagues working on the same project and that he suspects the Italian nurse may have been treated with transfusions of the doctor's blood.
According to the World Health Organization, the virus has killed at least 11,000 people since the outbreak began 18 months ago, and that 868 confirmed health worker infections and 507 related deaths have been reported in the three countries where the outbreak has been the strongest: Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.
But according to Giovani Rezza, a professor and immunologist with the Institute of Health, the gap in services available in the infected countries compared those in countries like Italy helps illustrate the problem in curbing the spread of the disease.
"The infected nurse in Italy will have about 40 health professionals looking after him, to make sure he will recover," Rezza said in an interview. "In the infected countries, a single health care worker must look after 40 infected people." Endit