British Ebola patient doing ‘pretty well’

The parents of William Pooley, the first British person to catch the deadly Ebola virus in the recent West Africa outbreak, have said that he is recovering well.

“He’s a lot better than we thought he might have been, we’ve only got what the medics tell us, but he’s got a little step in there which the physio gave him so he can rebuild his strength, that in itself is a good enough sign I think, but he seems to be pretty well actually,” his father said.
The patient’s father went on to say that he has also regained his appetite.

Pooley has spent the last week in a special isolation unit at Royal Free Hospital in London after being evacuated from Sierra Leone on August 24.

The volunteer healthcare worker is under the care of a specially trained team of doctors and nurses and has received the experimental drug ZMapp.

ZMapp showed further signs of promise last week after researchers successfully treated monkeys with the deadly disease, but there have been no human trials of the potential vaccine.

Ebola is a form of hemorrhagic fever whose symptoms are diarrhea, vomiting and bleeding.

According to the latest figures by the World Health Organization (WHO), some 3,070 infections and over 1,550 deaths of the disease have been reported in West Africa.

Ebola has mainly affected Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone, with Liberia reporting most deaths among the other countries.

The virus spreads through direct contact with infected blood, feces or sweat. It can be also spread through sexual contact or the unprotected handling of contaminated corpses.

It remains one of the world’s most virulent diseases, which kills between 25 to 90 percent of those who fall sick.