Mater Dei Hospital was on Ebola alert at 3.30am yesterday when a Senegalese man was admitted with suspicious symptoms that later turned out to be malaria.
The alarm was triggered on Friday evening when health authorities received a phone call saying the man, who had driven through Guinea on his way back to Malta from Senegal, was running a fever.
The authorities were taking no risks as Guinea has been hit by an Ebola outbreak since March, so they set a pre-planned emergency mechanism into motion.
The man, who has been living in Malta for the past four years, was picked up from his apartment in the centre of the island and taken to hospital, accompanied by Civil Protection Department personnel.
He was admitted to an isolated ward, that has been reserved and equipped for such emergencies, and blood tests were immediately carried out. Just over four hours later, at 7.45am, the tests confirmed he was not suffering from Ebola.
He remains at Mater Dei under observation.
The Health Department said four others who were living with the Senegalese were also assessed and although they had no symptoms they were kept in quarantine for 24 hours as a precaution.
Ebola, declared by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as a global public health emergency, is a rare and deadly disease. The first outbreak was identified in Guinea and it has since spread to other west African countries.
More than 7,100 people have been infected and the death toll has risen to 3,439 according to WHO, making it the worst Ebola outbreak on record. WHO this week said the virus’s spread was showing no signs of slowing.
‘Never a danger at any time on Ebola’
Ebola is spread by direct contact (through broken skin or mucous membranes) with a sick person’s blood or body fluids (such as urine, saliva, faeces, vomit and semen). It is also spread by contact with objects, such as needles, that have been contaminated with infected body fluids or infected animals.
Symptoms – which include fever, severe headache and muscle pain – may appear anywhere from two to 21 days after exposure to Ebola, but the average is eight to 10 days.
Nobody shied away from the case- Fearne
Malta faced its first alert in August when a Maltese man who had arrived from Sierra Leone was screened as a precaution, even though he had no symptoms. Tests proved negative.
Last month the government turned away a ship carrying a patient displaying symptoms associated with Ebola. He was subsequently treated in Sicily for what turned out to be hepatitis.
However, yesterday was the first time hospital staff, who have spent the past weeks carrying out simulation exercises, actually got to deal with a real-case scenario.
“Everything ran smoothly and I’m very proud to say that the doctors, nurses and all the staff rose to the occasion; nobody shied away from the case,” Health Parliamentary Secretary Chris Fearne said.
Mr Fearne said the Ebola Virus Disease Monitoring Committee would now carry out a post-mortem to determine whether some of the processes had to be fine-tuned. “The process was an orderly one and there was never any danger or risk for the population or staff at any time.”