×

Our award-winning reporting has moved

Context provides news and analysis on three of the world’s most critical issues:

climate change, the impact of technology on society, and inclusive economies.

Brazil tests man for Ebola, puts others under observation

by Reuters
Wednesday, 11 November 2015 16:14 GMT

A member of the French Red Cross disinfects the area around a motionless person suspected of carrying the Ebola virus as a crowd gathers in Forecariah, Guinea January 30, 2015. REUTERS/Misha Hussain

Image Caption and Rights Information

The man arrived in Brazil from Guinea and developed high fever with muscle pains and headaches two days later

SAO PAULO, Nov 11 (Reuters) - Brazil was testing a 46-year-old man coming from Guinea for Ebola after preventively shutting down a public health unit where he first got medical attention, the Health Ministry said on Wednesday.

The man, whose name officials declined to provide, arrived in Brazil on Nov. 6 and developed high fever with muscle pains and headaches two days later, the ministry said in a statement.

Guinea is one of three impoverished West African countries, along with Liberia and Sierra Leone, that have suffered with the most deadly outbreak of the Ebola virus in recent years.

The man sought medical help at an emergency room in Belo Horizonte, the capital of Brazil's southeastern state of Minas Gerais, the ministry said. That unit is no longer taking patients, it added.

The man was then quarantined and will be flown in a military plane on Wednesday to Rio de Janeiro, where the government has set up a lab to test blood samples for Ebola according to international security protocols.

Medical workers and other patients who had contact with the man are being monitored by health officials, according to the ministry's statement.

(Reporting by Walter Brandimarte; Editing by Andrew Hay)

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

-->