#Ebola: Spain Prepares For First Victim In Europe, En-route From Liberia.

Spanish missionary priest working at a hospital in Liberia was taken to Spain yesterday aboard a military jet.

Spain had been preparing to accept Europe’s first confirmed case of the Ebola virus.

A medically-equipped military jet was sent to Liberia to repatriate Miguel Pajares, 75, a Spanish missionary priest working at a hospital in the West African country.

The priest was one of three missionaries to test positive for the virus at the San Jose de Monrovia Hospital in the Liberian capital, Monrovia.

Brother Pajares and his two fellow workers, Chantal Pascaline Mutwamene of Congo and Paciencia Melgar from Equatorial Guinea, belong to the Hospital Order of San Juan de Dios, a Catholic humanitarian group that runs hospitals around the world, and had been helping to treat patients infected with the virus.

They had been in quarantine since Saturday along with two others – who have since tested negative – following the death of the hospital’s director, Brother Patrick Nshamdze.

The priest was due to arrive back in Madrid yesterday to be immediately transferred to the capital’s Carlos III hospital where an isolation ward had been set up in preparation.

The priest, who has spent five decades working as a missionary in Liberia, will be treated by only two medical professionals in a bid to contain the risk of virus spreading.

“The safety protocols we will use guarantee minimum risk,” said Mercedes Vinuesa Sebastian, the director general of public health in Spain.

On hearing that he would be repatriated, the Spanish priest told Spain’s ABC newspaper by telephone: “This news has lifted my spirits, it is great. I am very happy. It is worth fighting on.”

It will be the first time a confirmed case of Ebola is to be treated on European soil.

Hospitals across United States are isolating and testing potential Ebola patients, erring on the side of caution as the largest Ebola outbreak to date rages in West Africa.

A 46-year-old Columbus, Ohio, woman who recently travelled to one of the three countries affected by the outbreak is being held in isolation at a local hospital, the Columbus health department said yesterday.

She was hospitalised several days ago but is “doing well” as she awaits Ebola test results from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which are expected, the health department said.

The CDC last week sent a health alert to hospitals across United States urging them to ask patients about their travel history to help identify potential Ebola cases. 

The CDC said has tested blood samples from six people with possible Ebola symptoms who had recently traveled to West Africa.

Emergency room physicians at Johns Hopkins Medicine thought one of their patients had Ebola on Friday, but it turned out to be a false alarm, according to an internal memo obtained by ABC News.

The patient was ultimately diagnosed with malaria, but Dr. Trish Perl, a senior epidemiologist at the hospital in Baltimore, wrote in a memo to her staff that those involved did a “remarkable job” identifying and isolating the patient as well as making sure a minimal number of people were at risk for contracting the virus.

“This is a ‘wake up’ call for all of us to recognize that we are vulnerable because of the patients we serve and our location,” Perl wrote.