A World Health Organization staffer has arrived in Germany for treatment after contracting Ebola in a United Nations lab in Sierra Leone.  The unnamed Senegalese patient was ferried on a specially-equipped private airline, taken to hospital in a police convoy, and checked into the brand-new isolation ward at University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf, which specializes in treating contagious diseases.

Hamburg-based tropical medicine specialist Doctor Stefan Schmiedel says his team will not be using the experimental drug ZMapp on the epidemiologist, and will instead concentrate on “supportive care” such as fever reduction and fluid management.

“In West Africa the patients die relatively quickly of the illness, or survive and then return to health,” Schmiedel said.  “How that will go under our medical supervision, we can’t yet estimate.”

ZMapp was used on two American aid workers who recovered from Ebola infection, on a Spanish priest who did not, and on a British nurse who is still in hospital.

The lab in Sierra Leone where the Senegalese patient caught Ebola has been closed, the staff evacuated.  Three health workers were even returned to Canada while tests are conducted to determine if the lab can be reopened.

“The employees are returning to Canada prior to the end of their deployment as a precautionary measure after people in their hotel complex were confirmed to be infected with the Ebola virus,” read the statement from Canada’s Public Health Agency.  Other Canadians are still on the job with Medecins Sans Frontieres, which has no plans to withdraw.

Back in Sierra Leone, a third top doctor has died of Ebola.  Officials say Doctor Sahr Rogers had been working at a hospital in the eastern town of Kenema when he contracted the deadly virus.  In a country where there is only one doctor per 100,000 residents, the loss of three doctors in a few weeks is a devastating blow.