By Ahmed Aboulenein and Michael Erman
WASHINGTON, May 20 (Reuters) – A U.S. citizen who contracted Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where an outbreak of a rare strain of the virus has killed over 130 people, is being treated in Germany and is in stable condition, the U.S. CDC said on Wednesday.
Six other high-risk U.S. citizens were currently being moved from the DRC to Germany and the Czech Republic, Dr. Satish Pillai, the incident manager for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Ebola response, said in a briefing.
The patient had been previously identified by the Serge Christian mission organization as medical missionary Dr. Peter Stafford. Serge said Stafford contracted Ebola while treating patients.
The Washington Post, citing five people familiar with the U.S. Ebola response, reported on Wednesday that the White House resisted allowing Stafford to return to the United States, delaying his evacuation and care.
The wife and children of another missionary with the same group were allowed to return to the United States after CDC medical experts assessed the family twice, the Post reported.
Pillai on Wednesday did not address repeated questions on whether the U.S. was barring citizens who were infected with or exposed to Ebola from entering the country.
The outbreak of the rare Bundibugyo strain of the virus in eastern DRC has killed 131 people and been declared a public health emergency by the World Health Organization.
The U.S. CDC is deploying staff to the DRC, Pillai said, without specifying how many. The agency is also deploying a “handful” to neighboring Uganda, where two cases have been confirmed, he said.
They are not being deployed into the outbreak area because it is too unstable, he said, but will offer support to the CDC country offices already on the ground. The CDC has around 30 people in its DRC office and 100 in Uganda.
Pillai said there are no approved medical countermeasures for this strain of Ebola at present, but there were active discussions to send some monoclonal antibody products to some of the affected countries.
(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein in Washington and Michael Erman in New York; Editing by Chris Reese and Deepa Babington)
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