In German hospital a high-ranking UN official dies of Ebola

   Doctors treating a ‘patient’ during an infectious-disease crisis exercise at the St. Georg clinic in Leipzig. Photo: DPA

A U.N. medical official who caught Ebola while working in Liberia has died in the German hospital where he was being treated, the clinic in Leipzig said on Tuesday.

"The patient sick with Ebola fever died during the night in St. Georg Clinic in Leipzig. Despite intensive medical measures and maximum efforts by the medical team, the 56-year-old U.N. employee succumbed to the serious infectious disease," it said.

The St George’s clinic in Leipzig told in a statement that there was “no danger of the disease spreading following the treatment of the deceased patient.”.

He tested positive for Ebola on October, 6 and arrived in St George’s clinic in Leipzig for treatment from Liberia on October, 9, where he was put into a special isolation ward. Doctors marked his state as “highly critical, but stable,” at the time.

There is one other Ebola patient being treated in Germany now, at a clinic in Frankfurt. He worked for an Italian aid group in West Africa

The outbreak has killed more than 4,000 people since March - mostly in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Nigeria.

The World Health Organization described it as the "the most severe, acute health emergency seen in modern times". The US and UK are among countries to have introduced scanning at airports.

The medic, who has not been named, arrived last week and was the third Ebola patient to be treated in Germany.