HEALTHPLAN MAGAZINE

The Spanish missionary infected with the deadly Ebola virus has arrived in Madrid and will be quarantined at the Carlos III hospital in the Spanish capital.

Madrid, Spain - At 9:30 AM on Thursday morning the Spanish missionary Miguel Pajares, touched down at the Torrejón air base and was immediately escorted to the hospital by the police and medical convoy.

Pajares who works for a catholic humanitarian organisation called the San Juan de Dios order, had been working for the past five decades in the West African country of Liberia attending the sick when he contracted the Ebola virus.

Pajares is one of three missionaries who have been infected with the deadly virus. A colleague, Juliana Bohi, was also repatriated with Pajares, but is not thought to have the virus.

The repatriation of the pair was met with controversy with many health professionals concerned that the Spanish health system is not fully equipped to handle such a dangerous virus. The country has only one hospital with adequate biosafety levels unlike the U.S with 10 which also recently repatriated two of its own nationals.

Daniel Bernabéu president of Amyts, a trade union for physicians, said that the move was "risky" and felt that it was more "politically motivated" rather than health related. Many feel that it would have been safer to treat Pajares in Liberia rather than bring him back to Spain.

The director general of public health in Spain, Mercedes Vinuesa Sebastian, denied that there were any risks to public safety and said, "The safety protocols we will use guarantee minimum risk".

An isolation ward has now been set up for the two patients with the existing 30 patients being moved to other hospitals nearby.

Pajares is currently in a stable condition, said health officials.

The virus, which is one of the deadliest known to humans, has already taken the lives of 932 people in West Africa this year and has lead to a two-day emergency summit in Geneva by the World Health Organization.