"It was heartbreaking to see what was going on in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and, at the same time, to see how many resources can be mobilized to get this one patient from the DRC to Germany," said Thomas Cronen, a senior physician and infectious diseases expert in intensive care at the Charité — Berlin University Hospital.
Cronen and his colleague Maximilian Gertler were in Nairobi, Kenya, when we spoke. They were there to exchange knowledge about treating Ebola with 50 clinicians from the eight member states of the East African Community (EAC).
We had got onto the topic of the US-American missionary medic, Peter Stafford, who was evacuated from the DRC in mid-May for treatment at the Charité because, as the US government said at the time, Germany was closer than the US.
Others speculated that the Trump administration refused to allow Stafford into the US, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio later promising to keep all cases of Ebola out of the country.
Stafford had been helping people with Ebola in the DRC when he contracted the highly contagious and often-fatal disease.
