Ebola virus disease in Spain | |
---|---|
Disease | Ebolavirus |
Index case | 6 October 2014 |
Confirmed cases | 1 |
Articles related to the |
Western African Ebola virus epidemic |
---|
Overview |
Nations with widespread cases |
Other affected nations |
Other outbreaks |
In 2014, Ebola virus disease in Spain occurred due to two patients with cases of the disease contracted during the Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa; they were medically evacuated. [1] [2] A failure in infection control in the treatment of the second patient led to an isolated infection of Ebola virus disease in a health worker in Spain itself. The health worker survived her Ebola infection, and has since been declared infection-free. [3]
On 5 August 2014, the Brothers Hospitallers of St. John of God confirmed that Brother Miguel Pajares, who had been volunteering in Liberia, had become infected. He was evacuated to Spain on 6 August 2014, and subsequently died on 12 August. [1] On 21 September it was announced that Brother Manuel García Viejo, another Spanish citizen who was medical director at the St John of God Hospital Sierra Leone in Lunsar, had been evacuated to Spain from Sierra Leone after being infected with the virus. His death was announced on 25 September. [2] Both of these cases were treated at the Hospital Carlos III in Madrid. [4]
In October 2014, María Teresa Romero Ramos, an auxiliary nurse who had cared for Manuel García Viejo [5] at the Hospital Carlos III had become unwell and on 6 October tested positive for Ebola at her local hospital in Alcorcón, the Hospital Universitario Fundación Alcorcón. [6] [7] [8] A second test confirmed the diagnosis, [9] making this the first confirmed case of Ebola transmission outside Africa. Following testing, she was transferred to the Hospital Carlos III in Madrid for treatment. [10]
As of October 7, 50 contacts were being monitored, with 7 kept in isolation at the Hospital Carlos III, and an investigation was under way. [11] [12]
On 7 October, Madrid's regional government got a court order to euthanize Romero's pet dog, Excalibur, concerned that it posed a risk as a reservoir host. [13] By the afternoon there were over 30 animal rights activists who had barricaded the apartment to prevent officials from removing the dog. A number of online petitions were started rallying to save the dog, garnering hundreds of thousands of indications of support. Ramos' quarantined husband, Javier, called on a veterinarian radio show host, and recorded a video appeal, for help to save his dog. On 8 October, Spanish authorities removed, sedated and euthanized the dog and arranged for the safe disposal of its remains. [14]
On 9 October the Spanish health ministry quarantined three more people. [8] The health authorities announced that María Teresa Romero Ramos' condition had worsened significantly. [15] On October 12, she began to show some improvement. According to one report, the improvement may be attributed to Romero's having received the experimental drug ZMab which is similar to ZMapp, which has been used to treat several Ebola patients. However, according to information released by Spain's Centre for Health and Emergency Alerts, the nurse did not receive ZMab due to concerns over possible side-effects. [16] [17] Romero, however, was given the experimental antiviral drug Favipiravir, and it was reported that the dosages used were much higher than those used in the treatment of other patients. [18]
Medical staff in Madrid protested about the lack of effective protective equipment and safety precautions. [15] It was reported on October 17 that all the other people suspected of being infected in Spain had tested negative for the Ebola virus. [19]
On October 20 it was announced that Teresa Romero had tested negative for the Ebola virus, [3] suggesting she may have cleared the virus from her system. On November 1, it was announced that she was Ebola-free, and had been moved out of the isolation ward into a normal hospital bed to finish the process of recuperation from her illness. [20] The WHO declared Spain Ebola-free on 2 December, 42 days after Teresa Romero was shown to be free of Ebola on 21 October. [21]
In July 2018, a Spanish team from the October 12 Hospital in Madrid announced the discovery of an antibody and the development of a prototype vaccine against five strains of Ebola, including the most common and deadliest. [22] [23] [24]
The Ebola cases in Spain occurred when the country was governed by the People's Party, under prime minister Mariano Rajoy. The opposition Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) used its official Twitter account to directly blame Rajoy for the outbreak, and party leader Pedro Sánchez called the government a "disgovernment" while calling for the dismissal of Health Minister Ana Mato. Pablo Iglesias, leader of the left-wing party Podemos also blamed the government for the outbreak. These comments received scrutiny during the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain in which tens of thousands of people were infected and thousands died, while Sánchez was prime minister and Iglesias deputy prime minister. [25] [26] [27] [28]
Mariano Rajoy Brey, is a Spanish politician who served as Prime Minister of Spain from 2011 to 2018, when a vote of no confidence ousted his government. On 5 June 2018, he announced his resignation as People's Party leader.
José Luis Sánchez Capdevila is a Spanish former footballer who played as a midfielder, currently manager of CD Leganés B.
The 2015 Spanish general election was held on Sunday, 20 December 2015, to elect the 11th Cortes Generales of the Kingdom of Spain. All 350 seats in the Congress of Deputies were up for election, as well as 208 of 266 seats in the Senate. At exactly four years and one month since the previous general election, this remains the longest timespan between two general elections since the Spanish transition to democracy, and the only time in Spain a general election has been held on the latest possible date allowed under law.
The 2013–2016 epidemic of Ebola virus disease, centered in West Africa, was the most widespread outbreak of the disease in history. It caused major loss of life and socioeconomic disruption in the region, mainly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The first cases were recorded in Guinea in December 2013; the disease spread to neighbouring Liberia and Sierra Leone, with minor outbreaks occurring in Nigeria and Mali. Secondary infections of medical workers occurred in the United States and Spain. Isolated cases were recorded in Senegal, the United Kingdom and Italy. The number of cases peaked in October 2014 and then began to decline gradually, following the commitment of substantial international resources.
ZMapp is an experimental biopharmaceutical medication comprising three chimeric monoclonal antibodies under development as a treatment for Ebola virus disease. Two of the three components were originally developed at the Public Health Agency of Canada's National Microbiology Laboratory (NML), and the third at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases; the cocktail was optimized by Gary Kobinger, a research scientist at the NML and underwent further development under license by Mapp Biopharmaceutical. ZMapp was first used on humans during the Western African Ebola virus epidemic, having only been previously tested on animals and not yet subjected to a randomized controlled trial. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) ran a clinical trial starting in January 2015 with subjects from Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia aiming to enroll 200 people, but the epidemic waned and the trial closed early, leaving it too statistically underpowered to give a meaningful result about whether ZMapp worked.
Four laboratory-confirmed cases of Ebola virus disease occurred in the United States in 2014. Eleven cases were reported, including these four cases and seven cases medically evacuated from other countries. The first was reported in September 2014. Nine of the people contracted the disease outside the US and traveled into the country, either as regular airline passengers or as medical evacuees; of those nine, two died. Two people contracted Ebola in the United States. Both were nurses who treated an Ebola patient; both recovered.
The Hospital Universitario Fundación Alcorcón (HUFA) is a major general hospital in Alcorcón, a city in the Madrid metropolitan area of Spain. It was founded in 1997.
The Hospital Carlos III is a public hospital in the city of Madrid. It belongs to the Servicio Madrileño de Salud, the health service of the Community of Madrid. It was crested in 1990 from the merger of three previous hospitals, and was established as a center of excellence in research and treatment of infectious diseases.
This article covers the timeline of the 2014 Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa and its outbreaks elsewhere. Flag icons denote the first announcements of confirmed cases by the respective nation-states, their first deaths, and their first secondary transmissions, as well as relevant sessions and announcements of agencies such as the World Health Organization (WHO), the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and NGOs such as Doctors Without Borders; medical evacuations, visa restrictions, border closures, quarantines, court rulings, and possible cases of zoonosis are also included.
There is a cure for the Ebola virus disease that is currently approved for market the US government has inventory in the Strategic National Stockpile. For past and current Ebola epidemics, treatment has been primarily supportive in nature.
Attempts to form a government in Spain followed the inconclusive Spanish general election of 20 December 2015, which failed to deliver an overall majority for any political party. As a result, the previous People's Party (PP) cabinet headed by Mariano Rajoy was forced to remain in a caretaker capacity until the election of a new government.
The premiership of Mariano Rajoy over Spain spanned from 2011 to 2018.
A motion of no confidence in the Spanish government of Mariano Rajoy was debated and voted in the Congress of Deputies between 31 May and 1 June 2018. It was brought by Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) leader Pedro Sánchez after the governing People's Party (PP) was found to have profited from the illegal kickbacks-for-contracts scheme of the Gürtel case in a court ruling made public the previous day. This was the fourth motion of no confidence since the Spanish transition to democracy and the first one to be successful, as well the second to be submitted against Mariano Rajoy after Unidos Podemos's motion the previous year. Coincidentally, it was held 38 years after the first such vote of no confidence in Spain on 30 May 1980.
The 19th National Congress of the People's Party, officially the 19th Extraordinary National Congress, was held in Madrid from 20 to 21 July 2018, to renovate the governing bodies of the People's Party (PP) and establish the party's main lines of action and strategy for the next leadership term. A primary election to elect the new party president was held on 5 July. The congress was called by the party's National Board of Directors on 11 June as a consequence of former Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy's resignation as PP leader on 5 June, following the motion of no confidence that had voted his government down on 1 June. The leadership election was the first whereby PP members directly participate in choosing a leader for the party. On 26 June 2018, it was announced that only 66,706 PP members out of the 869,535 reported by the party had registered to vote in the election.
The government of Ignacio González was formed on 28 September 2012, following the latter's election as President of the Community of Madrid by the Assembly of Madrid on 26 September and his swearing-in on 27 September, as a result of the resignation of the former president, Esperanza Aguirre, out of personal motives. It succeeded the third Aguirre government and was the Government of the Community of Madrid from 28 September 2012 to 26 June 2015, a total of 1,001 days, or 2 years, 8 months and 29 days.
The COVID-19 pandemic in Spain has resulted in 13,980,340 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 121,852 deaths.
The COVID-19 pandemic in Spain had its first case in the Community of Madrid on 25 February 2020.
Mónica García Gómez is a Spanish anesthesiologist and politician, current coordinator and spokesperson of the political party Más Madrid in the Madrilenian Assembly. She was an elected deputy during the X legislature of the Madrilenian Assembly under the Spanish political party Podemos, and is currently a deputy in the XI legislature as part of Más Madrid. Since 2015, García has combined her political work with her job in health care, with a 50% reduction in working hours. She was appointed Minister of Health in the third government of Pedro Sánchez following the 2023 Spanish general elections.
The Hospital de Emergencias Enfermera Isabel Zendal is a public hospital constructed during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Hortaleza district of Madrid, Spain. Having opened its doors in December 2020 after a construction period of only 100 days, it had become the city's main recipient of patients infected by the virus and the Spanish hospital with most COVID-patients by January 2021. It is named after Isabel Zendal, a Spanish nurse notable for participating in the 1803–06 Balmis Expedition which brought smallpox vaccination to South America and Asia.