News: No plans to screen travellers entering the UK for Ebola + Ebola lands in Norway

Travellers entering the UK will not be routinely screened for the deadly Ebola virus, health officials said today as it experts say it is 'inevitable' we will see more cases reach European shores.

Public Health England said the country has 'robust, well-developed and well-tested NHS systems for managing unusual infectious diseases'.

But experts at PHE said it the risk of the virus reaching the UK remains 'low'.

It comes as the World Health Organisation said it is 'inevitable' more cases will be diagnosed in Europe, after a Spanish nurse was confirmed as the first case where a patient has become infected outside West Africa.  

WHO's European director Zsuzsanna Jakab said further such events were 'unavoidable'.

She said: 'Such imported cases and similar events as have happened in Spain will happen also in the future, most likely.

'It is quite unavoidable... that such incidents will happen in the future because of the extensive travel both from Europe to the affected countries and the other way around.'

'It will happen,' she added. 'But the most important thing in our view is that Europe is still at low risk and that the western part of the European region particularly is the best prepared in the world to respond to viral hemorrhagic fevers including Ebola.' 

Ebola lands in Norway

An ebola-infected Norwegian doctor was carefully transported in a medical convoy with police escort from Oslo’s main airport at Gardermoen to the country’s largest hospital on Tuesday afternoon. Authorities clearly wanted no risk of traffic accidents as they kept other vehicles on the road well away from the specially equipped ambulance carrying the stricken woman.

Two reserve ambulances drove front and back in the convoy in the case of any trouble along the route. Another specially equipped air ambulance had flown the doctor from West Africa home to Norway, landing a few hours later than expected at the military portion of the airport.

The doctor became ill after helping to treat ebola patients in Sierra Leone. Her colleagues say that won’t stop them from continuing to fight the ebola epidemic.

“In order to extinguish this fire, we have to run into the burning house,” said Anne Cecilie Kaltenborn, secretary general of Leger Uten Grenser, the Norwegian chapter of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning humanitarian organization Medecins Sans Frontieres. Bjørn Fougner, a Norwegian nurse who also has volunteered with the Norwegian Red Cross to treat ebola patients, agreed. “It’s important to get the message across that people are needed to fight the ebola epidemic,” Fougner told newspaper Aftenposten. “I’ll gladly travel back (to West Africa).”

Fougner said he can understand why many people hesitate to volunteer their services, “but it’s not as scary as it can seem here at home.” He was among health care professionals who traveled to Kenema in Sierra Leone in August as part of a delegation from the Norwegian Red Cross.