Suspected Ebola case treated at Hackney hospital

A suspected case of Ebola was treated at the Homerton Hospital in July, it was revealed by medical directors this morning.

The patient arrived at the accident and emergency department with a fever after returning from Sierra Leone in Africa, but later tested negative for the highly infectious and deadly disease.

A system was already in place at the hospital to isolate suspected cases of the haemorrhagic fever and send off for blood tests.

The case was revealed today at a board of directors in public meeting of Homerton University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

Earlier this month a town hall health scrutiny meeting heard that the Homerton Row hospital had run a simulation of what would happen if a patient turned up with Ebola – a “plausible” scenario according to its medical director Martin Kuper.

The current crisis is the most deadly outbreak of the haemorrhagic fever in history, and the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates more than 4,000 people have died of the virus so far, mostly in Liberia.

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Homerton Hospital carries out Ebola simulation exercises