The husband of the infected nurse who became the first person to contract the deadly Ebola virus in Europe has insisted that his wife stringently “followed regulations” while caring for the missionary priests who had the illness.
“She did everything she was told to, and at no time was she concerned that she could have been infected,” Javier Limon, the nurse’s husband, said in a telephone interview with daily Spanish El Mundo newspaper from the hospital isolation where he has been quarantined.
His wife, 44 years-old Teresa Romero Ramos, has 15 years experience as a nurse in Madrid.
It is not yet clear how exactly she contracted the virus except that she was part of a special team that cared for a Spanish missionary priest who died of Ebola last month after being repatriated from Sierra Leone.
The couple were due to go on holiday the day after the priest died, explained her husband. But they delayed it because he had inured his leg.
She decided instead to spend a few days with her mother and then on September 30 she began to feel unwell,” the husband said.
Angry with health authorities, the quarantined man complained that he had been told his dog, a Staffordshire bull terrier, would have to be put down because it had shared close contact with his wife.
“I won’t give permission, and they said that if I don’t they will get a court order to kill the dog. What next, will they sacrifice me too?”
His wife is believed to have been carrying the deadly virus for more than a week before being diagnosed on Monday after becoming infected while caring for missionaries who had returned to Spain from Sierra Leone.
Four people, including the nurse, have now been hospitalised and are being monitored for potential contagion of the deadly disease, Spain's health authorities said on Tuesday.
Officials for Madrid's health system told a press conference those hospitalised included the nurse's husband, a traveller from one affected country and another health worker.
The nurse is currently being treated with antibodies from previous infected patients in the hope of providing a cure, including blood from a Spanish missionary nun who was evacuated from Liberia in August and survived Ebola.
Another 21 medical staff who came into contact with the infected nurse when she was admitted into hospital in the early hours of Monday are also being monitored for signs of the virus.
"If appropriate containment measures were adopted this really should not have happened," said Jonathan Ball, a virology professor at the University of Notthingham. "It will be crucial to find out what went wrong in this case so necessary measures can be taken to ensure it doesn't happen again."
"As the African outbreak perfectly illustrates, healthcare workers put their life on the line, so everything should be done to ensure that risks are minimised as much as possible," he said.
"That is why it is so important for the international community to ramp up their efforts to combat this deadly disease."
The European Union has also demanded an explanation from Spain as to how she could have become infected.
In comments to Britain's Science Media Centre, experts said protective suits worn by health workers, coupled with safe disposal of patients' bodily waste, substantially reduced the risk.
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