Infected: Spanish priest Miguel Pajares, 75, tested postive for Ebola and is being treated in Madrid
A Spanish priest has become the first person carrying the deadly Ebola virus to be brought back to Europe for treatment.
Missionary Miguel Pajares, 75, was escorted to hospital in Madrid today by a convoy of medics in protective suits after being repatriated on a military plane from Liberia in west Africa this morning.
He was put in quarantine on Saturday after testing positive for the killer disease.
Mr Pajares, who had been treating patients infected with Ebola at a hospital his Catholic humanitarian group runs, was flown back to Spain accompanied by a nun.
Although she was uninfected, she was also quarantined.
The pair were due to be taken to an isolation ward at Madrid's Carlos III hospital after tests at an air force base in Madrid.
'The patients have arrived well, though a little disoriented. They are both now in quarantine,' Madrid health official Javier Rodriguez told a news conference.
Twelve medical staff working in three shifts will care for them in a building which has been cleared of other patients.
Mr Pajares' condition overnight was said to have deteriorated according to local reports, which claimed he was on a drip and was now unable to walk unaided.
But Rafael Perez-Santamarina, director of Madrid's La Paz hospital, said initial medical checks showed Mr Pajares was in stable condition.
Madrid regional government health chief Francisco Javier Rodriguez said neither was bleeding, which is a symptom of an advanced stage of the illness.
The priest's brother Emilio said he was 'worried but happy' about the transfer.
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Isolation: The Spanish missionary arrived this morning in an isolation chamber at Madrid's Carlos III Hospital
Convoy: Mr Parajes was under heavy guard as he became the first confirmed patient to be treated in Europe
Global attention: Journalists gathered outside the hospital in Spain's capital as the 75-year-old arrived
Mercedes Vinuesa, director general of public health in Spain, downplayed fears over the repatriation by insisting: 'The safety protocols we will use guarantee minimum risk.'
Mr Pajares had worked as a missionary in Africa for nearly five decades and was due to return to Spain for good in September.
Speaking before he was flown back he said: 'I'd like to return because we have a very bad experience of what's happened here.
'We are abandoned. We want to go to Spain and be treated like people.'
It comes as new images show more victims lying in the street in a badly-hit city in west Africa, with authorities unsure what to do.
Flown to Europe: The Spanish military used this plane to evacuate the 75-year-old priest in an isolation chamber
Protected: The priest was flown to Spain on this adapted Airbus A310 belonging to the Spanish Air Force
Medical worker: The missionary (right) had been working with patients at the St John Hospital in Monrovia, Liberia, as part of a team from the Catholic organisation Orden Hospitalaria San Juan de Dios
In the capital of Guinea, Conakry - a city of 1.7million people - police looked on helplessly after a man collapsed in a puddle of water in a crowded street.
Officers sealed off the area but no one approached or moved the man for several hours because they feared he might be infected.
He was then taken to an Ebola control centre for assessment and to be quarantined.
And in Lagos, Nigeria's 'megacity' capital with 21million people living in cramped, unhygienic conditions, five new suspect cases and a death have been reported.
Authorities are scrambling to get hold of isolation chambers as the country's health minister declared a global crisis.
Confusion: Police guarded this man for several hours before anyone moved him after he collapsed in a puddle in Guinea's capital Conakry, a city of 1.7million people. The death toll in the country has reached at least 363
Danger: The man was taken to an Ebola control centre for assessment to be quarantined in Conakry, Guinea
Left, the body left on the street in Guinea's capital; Right, a woman in Monrovia, Liberia - where Spanish priest Miguel Parajes, 75, had been working at a hospital - a woman weeps over the death of a relative
Nigerian health minister Onyebuchi Chukwu told reporters: 'We have a national emergency, indeed the world is at risk.
'Nobody is immune. The experience in Nigeria has alerted the world that it takes just one individual to travel by air to a place to begin an outbreak.'
Millions in Lagos live in cramped conditions without access to flushable toilets and signs posted across the city are warning people not to urinate in public.
Kenneth Akihomi, a 47-year-old worker installing fibre-optic cables, said he was carefully washing his hands to avoid infection - but most people were relying on their faith to stay healthy.
'They're not panicking. They are godly people,' he said. 'They believe they can pray, and maybe very soon there will be cure.'
Mourning: A Liberian woman weeps over the death of a relative from Ebola yesterday in the Banjor Community on the outskirts of Monrovia, Liberia. The virus has killed at least 282 people in the impoverished country
Rising toll: Nurses carry the body of an Ebola victim on the way to bury them yesterday in Monrovia, Liberia
Impoverished: Authorities had been slow to react to the outbreak because of a lack of medical facilities
Tears: Relatives weep on the outskirts of Monrovia, Liberia, as a relative is taken away for treatment
Last night the President of Liberia - where victims have been dragged into the streets and abandoned - announced a state of emergency which could hit people's civil liberties.
The Liberian Army has up road blocks for 'Operation White Shield' to stop people travelling to the capital from rural areas.
President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said her countrymen were still refusing to send sick relatives to isolation centres, massively increasing the spread of the epidemic.
The outbreak required 'extraordinary measures for the very survival of our state and for the protection of the lives of our people,' she added.
'Ignorance and poverty, as well as entrenched religious and cultural practices, continue to exacerbate the spread of the disease', she said.
And enforced quarantines have met resistance in Sierra Leone, where 750 soldiers have been deployed to the Ebola-ravaged east as part of 'Operation Octopus.'
Ebola is one of the world's deadliest viruses and causes some victims to bleed from the eyes, mouth and ears.
It can only be transmitted through direct contact with the bodily fluids of someone who is sick - for example, blood, semen, saliva, urine, feces or sweat.
The current outbreak has been by far the most deadly since the virus was identified in 1976, according to the World Health Organisation.
Protection: The virus can be contained if health workers wear protective clothing like this Liberian nurse today
Workers in rural west Africa have been given emergency supplies in the deadliest Ebola outbreak in history
Precaution: Liberian nurses spraying disinfectant around a house after loading the body of an Ebola victim on a truck for burial in the Virginia community yesterday on the outskirts of Monrovia, Liberia
Health catastrophe: In Monrovia, Liberia, where the Spanish priest was working, bodies have been left in the streets as fear grips people and stops them sending relatives to isolation centres, the nation's President said
Shocking: Relatives of Ebola victims in Liberia have started dragging their loved ones' bodies out of their homes and dumping them on the streets in a bid to avoid being quarantined. Above, a man walks past the dead body
Since breaking out earlier this year, the Ebola virus had killed at least 932 people in four west African countries as of Monday.
Up-to-date death tolls are hard to obtain because many cases are in remote areas, the virus has a lengthy incubation period and medics do not have the facilities to carry out full tests.
This year there have been at least 1,711 cases of the disease, which has no proven cure.
Before now the most deadly outbreak was in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1976 - the year the virus was discovered - killing 280 people or 88 per cent of everyone infected.
More than half of those infected in the current outbreak have died.
Next week a global panel of medical ethics experts will discuss whether to use experimental, untested drugs to treated the epidemic.
The summit is being convened by the World Health Organisation after two American aid workers from the group Samaritans Purse received the experimental treatment.
They were repatriated earlier this week after being diagnosed with the drug, produced by the tiny California biotech firm Mapp Biopharmaceutical.
Dr Marie-Paule Kieny, Assistant Director-General at the WHO, said: 'We are in an unusual situation in this outbreak.
'We have a disease with a high fatality rate without any proven treatment or vaccine. We need to ask the medical ethicists to give us guidance on what the responsible thing to do is.'
But U.S. health officials warned there are 'virutally no doses available' as President Barack Obama said it was too early to export untested drugs.
Toll: How the virus is killing people in west Africa, according to World Health Organisation figures from Monday
Crisis: The disease is now thought to have spread via the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (pictured) to Lagos, Nigeria, a 'megacity' of 21million people - many of whom live in unhygienic conditions
Nigerian health minister Onyebuchi Chukwu said: 'We have a national emergency, indeed the world is at risk'
'We've got to let the science guide us and I don't think all the information is in on whether this drug is helpful,' he said.
'The Ebola virus both currently and in the past is controllable if you have a strong public health infrastructure in place.
'We're focusing on the public health approach right now, but I will continue to seek information about what we're learning about these drugs going forward.'
Today the global children's charity UNICEF warned the disease's orphans are being shunned by their communities because people fear they are infected.
Roeland Monasch, UNICEF's representative in Sierra Leone, said: 'Children who are orphaned by the disease are finding it hard to be accepted in their communities and this has had huge psychological impacts on their lives.
'The Ebola outbreak has led to widespread misconceptions and myths and these are posing serious challenges in the fight to eradicate it.'
UNICEF warned cultural traditions were spreading the disease more quickly.
In some cultures, it is traditional to wash the body of an infected person by hand before they are buried.
'The challenges of the already weak Guinean health system were all the more worsened by the abrupt outbreak of the unknown Ebola virus disease,' said UNICEF's representative in Guinea Mohamed Ag Ayoya.
'The scale of the epidemic and ensuing mortality among health workers and communities reflect the response capacity of this fragile health system.'
FACTS ON EBOLA: DEADLY VIRUS EMERGED IN AFRICA IN 1976
Ebola first appeared in 1976 in two simultaneous outbreaks in Sudan and near the Ebola River in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which gave the disease its name.
There are several strains which vary in how dangerous they are to humans, but death rates have reached as high as 90 per cent of those infected.
In the current outbreak that is just over 50 per cent.
It is introduced into humans through direct contact with the blood, organs or other bodily fluids of infected animals which have included chimpanzees, gorillas, fruit bats, monkeys, forest antelope and porcupines found ill or dead or in the rainforest.
Deadly: Ebola first appeared in 1976 in two outbreaks in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo
The virus then spreads between humans through direct contact with blood, organs or other bodily fluids of infected people.
The World Health Organisation says ritual burials of Ebola victims have had a hand in spreading the disease, while men who have recovered from the disease can still transmit the virus through their semen for up to seven weeks.
Symptoms include fever, intense weakness, muscle pain, headache and sore throat followed by vomiting, diarrhoea, rash, impaired kidney and liver function, and in some cases, both internal and external bleeding.
People are infectious as long as their blood and bodily fluids contain the virus and the incubation period can range between two and 21 days.
Although the disease has no cure, modern medical treatment and quick isolation help hugely to bring the death toll down.
Source: World Health Organisation
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