REUTERS

Staff of the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres treat one of two suspected Ebola patients in the isolation unit of Kampungu in Congo's Eastern Kasai province,in this file photo. A German woman may have infected herself in a Hamburg lab.

German woman may have infected herself with Ebola

BERLIN – German doctors are treating a woman they say may have contracted the deadly Ebola virus while working in a laboratory in the city of Hamburg. The clinic where she is being treated said today there is no risk the virus will spread.

The scientist at the Bernhard-Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg may have contaminated herself with a needle while working at the high security research centre even though she had worn protective clothing, the clinic said.

After suffering from a fever, which could either be a symptom of the virus or an effect of a vaccination she received, the woman was put into isolation on Sunday, said the Hamburg-Eppendorf University Clinic in a statement.

The incurable haemorrhagic fever, which has a mortality rate of 50 to 90 per cent, is transmitted by contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected people.