'Ebola' Victim Had Yellow Fever

A German who sparked alarm in Berlin when he fell ill with a tropical disease that doctors initially feared might be the deadly Ebola virus, died Friday of Yellow Fever five days after returning from West Africa.

It appeared he might have been the victim of a rare situation where immunization against the disease failed to work.

The doctor who treated 40-year-old Olaf Ullmann said Yellow Fever and Ebola had similar symptoms -- heavy bleeding and a high temperature -- which delayed diagnosis until Friday. But as with other viruses, there was nothing else doctors could have done.

"Even had we known from the beginning he was suffering from Yellow Fever it would not have changed the treatment," Norbert Suttorp of Berlin's Charite hospital told a news conference.

Tropical medicine experts treated Ullmann wearing hermetic plastic suits but were fighting a losing battle to save him after his liver and kidneys failed Thursday. Suttorp said he slipped in and out of consciousness and was finally unable to breathe.

Like all viruses, Yellow Fever cannot be cured directly. Doctors can only keep a victim's strength up to help their immune systems fight it.

It's probable that Ullmann, a cameraman who had just spent two weeks shooting a wildlife film in the Ivory Coast, contracted the virus on that trip. Yellow Fever is a mosquito-borne virus that causes sudden onset of fever, chills, body pain, nausea and vomiting. Death usually comes seven to 10 days after infection, following a period of remission on the third or fourth day.

Because only mosquitoes carry it, there was no risk of the disease spreading to others, health officials said.

Ullmann's wife, who like two other people who traveled with him has shown no sign of illness, told doctors her husband had been vaccinated against Yellow Fever in 1993. The treatment is considered effective for at least 10 years.

Immunization, which is compulsory for visitors to tropical regions of Africa where Yellow Fever is endemic, makes it rare in Europe. In about 1 percent of cases the vaccine does not work.

Ullmann's case was the first Yellow Fever diagnosed in Germany since records started being kept in 1946, said Dr. Thomas Breuer, director of the infectious epidemic department at the Robert-Koch Institute, Germany's disease control center.

Ullmann had no documented vaccination before his trip, said Dr. Norbert Suttorp, director of the infectious disease clinic at the hospital; tests showed no signs of Yellow Fever antibodies in his blood. Medical officials said, however, that he could still have been vaccinated but that it may not have taken effect.

Charite hospital said it would maintain for the next day or two the strict quarantine it imposed around its isolation unit. Guards erected barriers around the ward as German newspapers ran banner headlines warning of the "Ebola Scare." The highly contagious disease is fatal in as many as four cases in five.

Medical staff a Charite criticized the media for playing up the incident.

CBS Worldwide Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report