EU ministers want coordinated effort on Ebola

European Union health ministers met in Brussels on Thursday to coordinate a response to the Ebola outbreak, as more suspected cases emerge in Europe. They agreed to help improve systems already set up in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea to screen commercial flight passengers leaving the three worst-hit countries.

France, UK and the Czech Republic had already announced plans to screen passengers arriving from West Africa, but there is no framework for requiring that member states take such measures. As EU Health Commissioner Tonio Borg put it, neither the European Commission nor a group of member states can "impose its will on other member states."

The ministers did agree to create a common questionnaire for travelers arriving from Ebola-affected areas, so that information sharing and communication could be streamlined. The European Commission is also trying to reach an agreement with the US to use State Department planes to evacuate European health workers who catch the disease while helping in West Africa.

Borg added that a workshop will be held on November 4 to exchange ideas and practices for infection control. Italian Health Minister Beatrice Lorezin, however, reminded the public that though there are a few cases in Europe, and more may come, the risk of an epidemic like the one in Africa is relatively low.

"We have good hospitals, good systems and good doctors to treat our citizens," she said. Her German counterpart Hermann Groehe echoed this sentiment.

Spanish nurse's condition improving

The Spanish government has been wrestling with these issues for weeks, ever since nursing assistant Teresa Romero became the first to contract the virus outside of West Africa. On Thursday, Health Ministry spokesman Fernando Simon announced that her condition was improving, though three others in Spain were being tested for the virus on the same day, including a man who was isolated at the Madrid airport after arriving from Nigeria.

Someone thought to have come into contact with Romero was also being examined, and the Spanish Health Ministry confirmed that this person was not a health worker.

Thus far, the only people to have contracted the virus outside of Africa have been hospital personnel, Romero and two nurses in Dallas, Texas.

Dallas nurse flown to Washington

The first Dallas nurse to be diagnosed with Ebola, Nina Pham, was flown from Texas to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) outside Washington, D.C. on Thursday to a special containment ward for infectious diseases. NIH has one of four such wards in the US, news agency Reuters reported, and it has only two beds.

Federal health officials spoke to a congressional hearing as Pham was being transferred, saying they still do not know how the two nurses could have contracted the disease from Thomas Eric Duncan, who travelled to the US from Liberia before he had symptoms of the virus.

At the same hearing, Dr. Thomas Frieden of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defended its decision to allow the second nurse, Amber Vinson, to board a commercial flight. At the time she had no symptoms of Ebola and only a slight fever, Frieden said.

The virus has claimed 4,500 lives since the outbreak began last spring.

es/sb (AP, dpa, Reuters)