A US doctor who contracted Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo during the current deadly outbreak has been admitted to an isolation ward in a German hospital, health officials said.
The patient - named as medical missionary Dr Peter Stafford - arrived in Germany overnight, after the United States requested Berlin's help in treating him.
"I can confirm that the US citizen who was infected with the Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been admitted to the special isolation unit at the Charite" hospital in Berlin, a health ministry spokeswoman said.
The ministry declined to comment on his condition.
On arrival in Germany, the doctor disembarked from a plane wearing a white protective suit and a mask and was helped into an ambulance by people also wearing protective gear, the Bild newspaper reported.
Together with six other people with whom he had come into contact - thought to include his family members - Dr Stafford was flown on to Berlin and transported in a convoy of vehicles to hospital, the newspaper reported.
Dr Stafford lives in the DRC with his wife Rebekah, also a doctor, and their four young children, according to the Christian missionary organisation Serge.
German officials have declined to comment on whether Dr Stafford's family - who have shown no symptoms - or another doctor who treated Ebola patients alongside Dr Stafford would also be brought to Berlin.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had said on Monday that the American had contracted the virus following exposure related "to their work" in the DRC and had tested positive late Sunday.
Serge said Dr Stafford was exposed while treating patients at Nyankunde hospital, where he had worked since 2023.
The World Health Organization has declared the Ebola outbreak in the DRC, which has killed almost 140 people, with 600 suspected cases, an international health emergency.
However, the chair of the WHO's emergency committee on the situation said the outbreak does not meet the threshold for a pandemic.
"The current situation and criteria for a public health emergency of international concern have been met, and we agree that the current situation does not satisfy the criteria for a pandemic emergency," Lucille Blumberg told reporters, speaking from South Africa.
The WHO said the risk of the Democratic Republic of Congo's Ebola outbreak was currently high at the national and regional levels but low worldwide.
The WHO assesses "the risk of the epidemic as high at the national and regional levels and low at the global level," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a press conference at the UN health agency's headquarters in Geneva.
