THE first patients have been admitted to a new Ebola hospital being overseen by a Bradford consultant in Sierra Leone.

The 100-bed centre, in the jungle near Moyamba, was due to open on Monday but was beset by delays over the suitability of contamination protection clothing.

Today, Professor John Wright, a consultant at Bradford Royal Infirmary, said everyone was nervous, but prepared.

"It’s E-Day. Inevitably for our first night performance everything goes wrong. The ambulance drives to the wrong entrance. A group of local health staff drive along behind taking photos of the great occasion, rather morbid tourists, who we have to chase away.

"The ambulance stands for too long in the mid-afternoon heat while the team dresses in PPE. "There is no security guard to open the external gate to get access. But all in all our rehearsals pay off and we have our first patients safety admitted and under treatment."

Prof Wright said Norwegian medics took the lead with the patients, who were four to five days into symptoms at the critical phase, and did a great job.

"There are lots of things we need to improve, but this is really a continuous quality and safety improvement cycle and we will get better and better," he added.

The hospital is specifically for the treatment of the virus, which has killed more than 6,900 people in West Africa.

READ PROFESSOR JOHN WRIGHT'S EBOLA EMERGENCY BLOG

"We don’t want people without Ebola to turn up here and risk getting Ebola, but we want to make sure those with Ebola get isolated and treated properly as quickly as possible,” he said.

Clinical epidemiologist Prof Wright worked in Africa in the early 1990s during the TB and HIV epidemics, but had never encountered Ebola before.

“It’s a little bit like riding a bike, I think,” he said.

“You first go in a little bit nervous and you feel a bit shaky, but after about ten to 15 minutes it feels completely normal and actually, because it’s so routine, I was surprised as to how familiar it was to me.”

Aside from the obvious health challenges of working with such a contagious disease, the team has come up against head-scratching problems such as how to safely transfer patient information from the danger ‘red zone’ to the offices to update patient records.

Several methods were trialled and medics are now making notes and then holding them up for those outside of the contagious area to take photographs of.

The hope is to manage the opening of the new hospital and gradually increase the number of patients admitted, so doctors are not overwhelmed with people they cannot treat.

Prof Wright travelled with an organisation called Doctors of the World and is due to return to the UK on December 28.

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