Washington : The United States has diagnosed its first case of the deadly Ebola virus, a man who became infected in Liberia and traveled to Texas, US health officials have said.
The patient was hospitalised with symptoms that were confirmed to be caused by Ebola, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spokesman told AFP.
Earlier, the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas said it had placed in strict isolation a person based on “symptoms and recent travel history.” The patient is the first to be diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, although a handful of US medical workers who were infected in West Africa have been flown back to the United States for treatment, and have recovered.
Thousands of kids orphaned
At least 3,700 children in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone have lost one or both parents to Ebola since the start of the outbreak in West Africa, according to preliminary estimates by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), which was released, and many are being rejected by their surviving relatives for fear of infection.
“Thousands of children are living through the deaths of their mother, father or family members from Ebola,” said Manuel Fontaine, UNICEF’s regional director for West and Central Africa. Preliminary reports from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone suggest that the number of children orphaned by Ebola has spiked in the past few weeks.
