A 56-year old Sudanese man who was working as a United Nations lab technician in Liberia in the fight against Ebola has died of the disease.  Abdel Fadeel Mohammed Basheer was in charge of medical waste disposal, and had fallen ill on 6 October.

Basheer was the third patient to be airlifted from Africa to Germany for treatment – in this case, to the Saint Georg Clinic in Leipzig – and the first to die there.  A Senegalese man working with the UN World Health Organization was treated in Hamburg from August until earlier this month.  A Ugandan doctor working for an Italian aid organization is still being treated in hospital in Frankfort.

Healthcare workers are on the frontlines, treating patients and often dealing with their infectious bodily fluids.  That’s why healthcare workers are infected at a disproportionately higher rate than the general population. 

In Spain, El Pais reports that nurse Teresa Romero is “stable” after a “mild clinical improvement”.  That’s good news for her, because all available evidence indicates that the chance of surviving Ebola goes up after two weeks, and it’s been 15 days since she first noticed symptoms of the disease.  Romero likely became infected treating one of the two missionary priests who caught Ebola in West Africa and were airlifted to Madrid’s Carlos III Hospital for treatment. 

Her bosses initially ignored her concerns, and Romero wasn’t admitted for a few days after first reporting symptoms.  Authorities have since admitted her, quarantined her husband and a handful of other people, and killed her dog, Excaliber, out of fear he might carry the Ebola virus.  But at least they treated her with ZMapp, the experimental drug from America that has shown promise in treating Ebola.

One dog that does not appear to be doomed is Nina Pham’s King Charles Spaniel, Bentley, in Dallas, Texas.  He’s only a year old, but officials decided to quarantine him at an Air Force base in Texas while Pham recovers.  The 26-year old Nurse tested positive for Ebola after being part of the team that treated Michael Duncan, the Liberian man who died in the Texas hospital that appears to have botched the crucial early days of his case.  Her condition has already been upgraded to “good”, after being treated with antibodies from the donated blood plasma of Ebola survivor Dr. Kent Brantly, the first American to be infected in the current outbreak.

Romero and Pham are the first and second persons, respectively, to be infected with the Ebola virus outside Africa.