UN soldier flown to Netherlands for Ebola care

Dutch health officials said on Saturday that a peacekeeper who contracted Ebola while in Liberia had arrived in the Netherlands to be treated for the disease.

The man, a Nigerian national who was not identified, was taken on a medical flight to the capital, Amsterdam, to be treated at the central city of Utrecht's Universal Medical Center.

A special Ebola wing has been set up at the center - one of four suites in the country in place to deal with the lethal infectious disease - to treat the man, who was serving as a peacekeeper assisting the fight against Ebola.

Several European countries have accepted patients involved in the fight against Ebola to be treated at hospitals, at the behest of the World Health Organization. Spain has treated its own citizens who caught the disease while in West Africa.

"After Germany, France and Switzerland, it is The Netherlands' turn to make a contribution by welcoming an employee of an international organization," the Dutch health and development ministers said in a joint letter to parliament.

A Frankfurt clinic announced on Thursday that a Ugandan doctor who contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone has been released after seven weeks of intensive treatment.

Sixteen people who came into contact with the soldier were on Friday said to have been quarantined.

Some 17,000 people have become sick with Ebola in the past year, principally in the countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. In Sierra Leone on Saturday, two doctors died of the disease, bringing to nine the number of medics killed.

The European Union on Satrurday pledged 62 million euros ($76 million) to help in the struggle with the disease in all three nations. The funding was announced in a visit to the Guinean capital, Conakry by EU International Cooperation Commissioner Neven Mimica.

This program will allow us to engage with the Guinean government in a new area, that of urban sanitation," said Mimica.

rc/shs (AP, AFP, dpa, Reuters)