LATIN AMERICAN HERALD TRIBUNE
By Walter Lippmann
Caracas, Sunday, November 23, 2014

Cuban Doctor with Ebola in Stable Yet Worrying Condition

GENEVA – The health of Cuban doctor Felix Baez Sarria,
who was flown to Switzerland last Thursday from Sierra Leone
where he contracted the Ebola virus, is stable though a cause
for concern, the Cantonal Hospital of Geneva said Saturday.

“Today his state of health remains stable, but is
worrying. The patient is in a special room in a section isolated
from the rest of the hospital,” the medical center said in
a communique.

The wife of Dr. Baez Sarria, a specialist in internal medicine
and a member of the brigade of Cuban doctors who traveled to
Sierra Leone to fight the Ebola virus, said in a statement to the
official daily Juventud Rebelde that on Friday her husband called
her twice from Geneva.

She said they have been in constant contact since he was
infected with the virus and that he is confident,
“positive” and “very well looked
after.”

“Don’t worry, I feel fine. This will all turn out
well,” were Baez’s words to his wife, Vania Ferrer,
the newspaper said.

“Felix is deliberate, calm, and a very good father, son,
husband and doctor. He is very human,” Ferrer said,
adding that in their conversations she felt he was “in
very good spirits and very positive, since they are sure this
will all turn out well.”

Juventud Rebelde noted Saturday that at Baez’s home in
Havana there is “a family of doctors,” since his
wife is also a physician and one of his children is studying
medicine.

The daily revealed that Vania Ferrer also volunteered to treat
Ebola in West Africa as part of the Cuban brigade, which up to
now has been made of men only.

Dr. Baez Sarria, 43, has been treated since Friday at the
Cantonal Hospital of Geneva, chiefly with Zmapp, an experimental
biopharmaceutical drug that has had encouraging results in cases
of other foreign patients infected with the virus in Africa.

Not yet determined are the exact circumstances under which he
contracted the virus in Sierra Leone, where he was a member of
the first brigade – of 165 health professionals –
sent from Cuba in early October to West Africa to fight the
Ebola epidemic.

Another two brigades were sent several weeks later with a total
of 83 medical personnel to Liberia and Guinea.