Ebola scare over Somali refugee pronounced false alarm

Rome, October 13 – An Italian Ebola scare ended Monday when Umberto I Hospital doctors found that a young Somali man who fainted at an immigration office was an epileptic.

The man fell ill while queuing to get his asylum permit extended at a Rome police office. “He had convulsions, a high fever and blood was flowing from his nose as he fell suddenly to the ground,” the head of the Police officers’ union SIULP Saturno Carbone, quoted colleagues working at the immigration office of Rome’s police headquarters saying. ”

The man was taken ill at the counter of the Refugee room and the emergency number 118 was called immediately”. “Health workers who arrived at the scene kept their distance from the foreigner once they understood his symptoms while the police cordoned off the area”.

The Somali man was found to be suffering only from epilepsy after he was rushed to the Umberto I hospital, one of three hospitals, together with the Spallanzani and the Gemelli polyclinic, equipped to treat infectious diseases in the Eternal City.