At the Ebola treatment centre in eastern Sierra Leone, a recent August day saw more than 60 patients that needed tending to. Among them were an ambulance full of villagers suspected of Ebola, patients sleeping in a tent as they awaited their diagnoses, and a young man eager to be discharged after two weeks of treatment in isolation.

Dealing quickly with these patients depended on work being done inside two tents at the Médecins Sans Frontières treatment centre — the mobile laboratory, where a rotating team of Canadian scientists have been testing blood samples to determine which patients to admit and which to discharge. But after a Senegalese epidemiologist deployed by the World Health Organization tested positive for Ebola over the weekend, the United Nations agency has pulled its people from eastern Sierra Leone, including the Canadian team, which is now being evacuated home by private charter.

With the lab currently out of commission, blood samples at the MSF centre will need to be sent by car to Kenema, a city four to six hours away over a bumpy road prone to flooding during the rainy season. The Kenema facility is also the sole remaining Ebola lab operating in Sierra Leone, where the outbreak, which has now caused more than 900 reported cases in this country alone, continues to spiral out of control.

“Without a lab, everything is slower,” said MSF spokesperson Karin Ekholm, speaking from the capital, Freetown. “It makes the whole process smoother when we can discharge or confirm cases more regularly . . . and not keep people waiting for the test results.”

The Canadian team was first deployed to West Africa at the request of the WHO after Sierra Leone confirmed its first case in late May. In an emailed statement on Wednesday, the Public Health Agency of Canada said its team, the third it has deployed to the region, will end its deployment early as a “precautionary measure after people in their hotel complex were confirmed to be infected with the Ebola virus.”

“The employees are in good health, show no signs of illness and the risk that any of them were infected is very low,” the statement said. “As an added precaution, the employees will not be travelling on a commercial flight to Canada, will be monitored closely on their journey home and after they return to Canada, and will be in voluntary isolation.”

The Senegalese epidemiologist has now been evacuated to Germany for treatment and was well enough to walk into his aircraft, according to WHO spokesperson Christy Feig.

Investigations are underway to try and determine how the Senegalese epidemiologist was sickened, and a WHO team is now in eastern Sierra Leone examining the living spaces and workplaces used by their people.

“(Evacuating) was the responsible thing to do. The field team has been through a traumatic time with this incident,” said Dr. Daniel Kertesz, the WHO’s representative in Sierra Leone, in a written statement Tuesday. “They are exhausted from many weeks of heroic work, helping patients infected with Ebola. When you add a stressor like this, the risk of accidents increases.”

Citing privacy reasons, the Canadian government is not releasing the names of the scientists or their scheduled time of arrival home. It is also unclear when they or another Canadian team might go back to Sierra Leone but in an earlier written statement, spokesperson Sean Upton said the health agency is “preparing to send another team to Sierra Leone once appropriate steps have been taken to ensure a safe living environment.”

MSF’s Ekholm said the Canadian scientists “would be welcome back when they want” at both the treatment centre and the hotel, which they have now restricted to MSF personnel only. No MSF staffers at the hotel are currently showing any signs or symptoms, according to Ekholm.

Meanwhile, a senior adviser to Sierra Leone’s president said on Wednesday that a third physician in the country, Dr. Sahr Rogers, has died from Ebola after contracting the virus in Kenema. Across the four West African countries affected by the epidemic, more than 2,615 cases and 1,427 deaths have now been reported, with Liberia currently recording the highest number of cases.

The situation in Liberia is particularly worrisome and a recently opened MSF treatment centre has already filled its 120 beds, with plans to further expand.

“Self-protection is occupying the entire focus of states that have the expertise and resources to make a dramatic difference in the affected countries. They can do more, so why don’t they?” Brice de la Vigne, MSF’s director of operations, is quoted as saying in a written statement.

A new Ebola outbreak was also recently confirmed in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the WHO is reporting 24 suspected cases and 13 deaths. So far, the DRC outbreak appears to be a separate event with no link to the West African epidemic, the WHO said.

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