Spain Evacuating Missionary Elder With Ebola

Madrid will send an air force plane to
Liberia to bring an elderly Spanish missionary
infected with Ebola back to Spain for treatment,
the defence ministry said late on Tuesday.
Defence Minister Pedro Morenes has ordered the
preparation of a "medicalised" Airbus A310
which will be sent to the West African nation to
retrieve the missionary, the defence ministry
said in a Twitter message.
The plane should be ready to take off from
05:00 am (0300 GMT) on Wednesday, the
ministry added.
The defence ministry did not say when the
missionary would arrive back in Spain or where
he would be taken for treatment for the deadly
hemorrhagic fever.
Miguel Pajares, a 75-year-old Roman Catholic
priest, tested positive for Ebola at a hospital in
the Liberian capital Monrovia where he worked,
the aid organisation he works for said earlier on
Tuesday.
He has been in quarantine at the Saint Joseph
Hospital in Monrovia, along with five other
missionaries, since the death on Saturday of
hospital director from Ebola.
Pajares has worked in Liberia for over five
decades, the last seven years at the Saint
Joseph Hospital.
Two other women who were also in quarantine,
one from Congo and the other from Guinea, also
tested positive for Ebola, Spanish aid
organisation Juan Ciudad ONGD said in a
statement.
During an interview broadcast on Monday,
Pajares said he and the other missionaries in
quarantine would like to be taken to Spain for
treatment.
"I have a fever. I don't have any appetite, I
could go without eating anything, I have a lot of
pain in my joints. I need help to move from one
place to the other," he told CNN en Espanol, a
24-hour Spanish-language news network.
"We hope that we can be evacuated. For us it
would be a huge joy because if we are taken to
Spain we would be in good hands and we could
get better, God willing," he added.
Two Americans who worked for Christian aid
agencies in Liberia and were infected with Ebola
while taking care of patients in Monrovia were
brought back to the United States for treatment
in recent days.
Both patients were flown home on a Gulfstream
private jet which had been fitted with a
collapsible, mobile isolation unit designed to
transfer employees from the US Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) exposed
to contagious diseases.
Over 1 600 people who have been infected with
the hemorrhagic fever in West Africa since
March, marking the largest outbreak of Ebola in
history.
A total of 887 people have died of the virus in
Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and Nigeria, a 55%
fatality rate, according to the World Health
Organisation.
The World Bank has pledged up to $200m to
Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone to help contain
the outbreak.
Ebola is transmitted through close contact with
bodily fluids, and people who live with or care
for patients are most at risk.