Ebola battle top on the minds of EU ministers meeting at Luxembourg

Luxembourg: European foreign ministers gather in Luxembourg today to try and formalise a joint EU response to combat the Ebola virus amid diplomatic warnings the crisis has reached a “tipping point”.

The ministers will meet hours after it was announced that a Spanish nurse who was the first person outside Africa to be infected had tested negative for the virus. Ahead of the talks, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said the bloc should consider sending “a civilian EU mission” to west Africa.

“This would offer a platform to (EU) member states” to send medical staff to the region, he said at a health forum in Berlin. One EU diplomat said Britain – which already has a navy ship bound for Sierra Leone laden with medical staff and supplies – hoped to “galvanise EU action on Ebola”. “There is a real sense that this is a tipping point and we must get to grips with it now,” said the diplomat.

“If we can deal with it in the country, we don’t have to deal with it at home.” Another diplomat said there are plans for three nations to spearhead global aid to the worst-hit countries: the United States for Liberia, Britain for Sierra Leone and France for Guinea.

A global UN appeal for nearly $1 billion (785 billion euros) has so far fallen short, with only $385.9 million given by governments and agencies, and a further $225.8 million promised. The political move comes as Madrid announced on yesterday that Teresa Romero, a nurse hospitalised on October 6, has tested negative for the virus.

The 44-year-old will have to undergo a second test before she can officially be declared free of Ebola, the Spanish government said. Romero contracted the tropical fever after caring for two Ebola patients who died at Madrid’s Carlos III hospital, in the first known case of transmission outside Africa.

She will be given another test “in the coming hours”, according to a statement from Spain’s special Ebola committee, which added that her “health was… developing favourably”.

“I am very happy today because we can say Teresa beat the disease,” Romero’s husband Javier Limon said in a video filmed at the hospital where he is being kept under observation with 14 other people who had contact with Romero before she was diagnosed.

AFP