NHS wards were left reeling after two suspected cases of Ebola walked into unprepared A&E departments over the weekend.
Staff at London’s University Hospital Lewisham are said to have panicked when a 24-year-old man, recently returned from Sierra Leone where nearly 1,000 people have died from the virus, demonstrated Ebola-like symptoms in the A&E department on Saturday night.
Meanwhile, an Ebola scare shut down Coventry’s main walk-in centre on Saturday after another man, who had recently returned from Nigeria which has seen a handful of cases, arrived at the Hillfields centre with a fever.
An unnamed source in The Sun described the reaction on Saturday night as “farcical” and alleged the London hospital was ill-prepared to deal with Ebola cases.
The damning assessment comes as the director general of the World Health Organisation Dr Margaret Chan labelled the Ebola outbreak "unquestionably the most severe acute public health emergency in modern times." She added the Ebola virus had progressed from a public health crisis to “a crisis for international peace and security.”
Describing the reaction, the unnamed source claimed: “The hospital is unprepared. Staff are panicking and scared for their safety.”
Although the man later did not test positive for the Ebola virus, the source described how staff at the hospital refused to allow the patient on their ward – with one doctor purportedly “reluctant to go near him.”
