NEW YORK, October 24. /TASS/.A New York City doctor who worked recently with Ebola patients in West Africa and returned to New York City tested positive for the illness on Thursday, officials said. The announcement was made at a news conference late on Thursday, hours after the doctor was admitted to a city hospital with Ebola symptoms and taken into isolation.
The 33-year-old doctor was tested at the hospital, where results indicated he has the disease, officials said. It is the first diagnosed Ebola case in the city.
The doctor was working for the Doctors Without Borders organization in Guinea, one of three West African nations hardest hit by Ebola, news agencies said.
Health care workers are vulnerable because of close contact with patients when they are the sickest and most contagious. In West Africa this year, more than 440 health workers have contracted Ebola and about half have died.
The World Health Organization has said the death toll from the Ebola outbreak in West African has exceeded 4,800, and almost 10,000 have been infected.
The first case of Ebola has been confirmed in Mali, making it the sixth West African country to be touched by the worst outbreak on record of the deadly haemorrhagic fever. The patient, a two-year-old girl, had recently arrived from neighbouring Guinea, where the outbreak began.
The European Union will provide health workers, cash and evacuation resources for worst-Ebola-hit African countries, French President Francois Hollande said in Brussels at the EU summit, adding it would be disussed at the summit the next day.
There should not be panic, but not inaction either. The world must recover from the disease, Hollande said.
Earlier, outgoing European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said the European Union would provide 24.4 million euros for research to develop vaccine against Ebola.
The research will be aimed at containing the epidemic and protecting medical personnel and first of all developing vaccine, he said.
The European Union appointed a coordinator on Thursday to lead its drive to fight Ebola in West Africa following criticism that European efforts so far to contain the world's worst recorded outbreak of the disease have been inadequate.
Christos Stylianides, who takes over on November 1 as the EU's commissioner for humanitarian affairs and crisis management, will also be the 28-nation bloc's point man on Ebola.
European states have been stepping up their contributions of cash, hospitals and health workers recently after criticism by aid officials of a slow early response to an outbreak that has claimed nearly 5,000 lives, mostly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, Reuters said.
"Up until now, the response from most EU governments has been woefully inadequate," Oxfam's Natalia Alonso said last week. The aid group said on Thursday it expected to hear strong new pledges of cash from EU heads of state and guarantees to turn those pledges into cash without delay.
The EU leaders will say that a "sustained, coordinated and increased response is required to curb current trends" in the spread of infection, according to a draft statement cited by Reuters.
Most European initiatives so far to counter Ebola in West Africa have been national rather than EU efforts. Britain has sent 750 troops to Sierra Leone to help set up treatment units and a training facility and it is providing more than 700 treatment beds in the former British colony. France has promised to set up new treatment centres for Ebola in Guinea, once a French colony.
Smaller EU countries have said they are ready to send healthcare workers to West Africa but lack the resources to evacuate them if they caught the disease.
The EU addressed this problem this week by providing a guarantee to international health workers that they would either be flown to Europe or receive high-quality treatment on the spot if they caught the disease in West Africa.
No Ebola cases have been reported in Russia, but all possible preventive measures are taken in the county. Russia is working on vaccine development. Russian specialists have been sent to West Africa to help in dealing with the disease outbreak.