 |
| Ebola victim Teresa Romero Ramos with her beloved dog Excalibur, which authorities have put down |
A Spanish ebola victim’s pet dog was put down last night over fears it could transmit the disease, prompting outrage from animal lovers who chanted ‘murderers’ outside the woman’s home.
Fury erupted after a government health spokesman confirmed that Teresa Romero Ramos’s dog, Excalibur, had been destroyed. The official explained: ‘Unfortunately we had no other choice.’
The animal was put to sleep inside Mrs Romero Ramos’s home, which was disinfected before the animal’s body was taken away in a white van to a nearby incinerator.
Demonstrators who mounted a vigil outside to try to stop the move shouted ‘murderers’ and several threw themselves on the ground as the vehicle left.
Some 300,000 people had already signed a petition urging authorities to spare Excalibur.
Twitter was awash with photographs of dogs, cats and birds which were posted alongside the hashtag ‘SalvemosAExcalibur’ – Spanish for ‘Let’s save Excalibur’.
Mrs Romero Ramos, 44, from Galicia in north-west Spain, who is one of the medical team that treated two repatriated Spanish priests who died from ebola, has been in quarantine since it was confirmed she was carrying the virus.
She has now admitted touching her face with her gloves as she took off a protective suit after leaving the room of one of the priests.
Mrs Romero Ramos confessed her accident to a doctor after earlier insisting that she had no idea how she became infected.
Hospital chief German Ramirez said yesterday – 48 hours after the launch of a probe into how Mrs Romero Ramos caught the virus – ‘It looks like we have found the origin.’
But the speed with which he attributed the shock transmission to a ‘slip-up’ failed to silence critics who demanded that heads rolls after a string of spectacular mistakes by health co-ordinators.
Health minister Ana Mato is facing calls for her resignation after it emerged that Mrs Romero Ramos complained of feeling unwell six days before she was eventually admitted to hospital.She was rushed to hospital by unprotected paramedics in a normal ambulance only taken out of service 12 hours later and found out she had ebola by reading a Spanish newspaper website as she waited to be quarantined.
Her home in Alcorcon near Madrid that she shares with husband Javier Limon Romero, one of those quarantined at Madrid’s Carlos III Hospital, was not disinfected until yesterday morning.
Six people in total have now been quarantined since the start of Monday’s crisis.
They include three other hospital nursing staff who helped treat Miguel Pajares and Manuel Garcia Viejo, the Spanish priests who died after they were repatriated from West Africa.
Mrs Romero Ramos was reportedly feeling better after being treated with antibodies from an ebola survivor. She told a Spanish TV station by phone: ‘Today I’m better. It’s slow going but I’m better.’
Revealing how she discovered she was infected, she said: ‘Nobody told me anything.
‘I suspected something because at the beginning the nurses and doctors came in every hour, then they stopped coming in and I thought that something was up.
‘I got hold of my mobile and that’s when I saw on the website of El Pais newspaper that I had tested positive for ebola twice. Nobody ever told me to my face, “Teresa you’ve got ebola”.’
She went on to say that she had been given only 20 minutes’ training in how to put on and take off her protective suit.
 |
| Fury: A demonstrator blocking the road to stop the van transporting Excalibur is removed by a police officer, outside the housing development in which the nurse lives in Alcorcon, outside Madrid |
 |
| women cry after locals and members of animal rights groups clashed with police to stop the removal and euthanasia of Excalibur |
 |
| A woman is helped after fainting following the exit of the van transporting Excalibur in Alcorcon, Spain |
 |
| Demonstrators run in front of policemen and in front of the van transporting Excalibur |
Culled from DAILY MAIL
No comments:
Post a Comment