WHO workers temporarily pull back from Sierra Leone's Ebola hot zone

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday said it has temporarily pulled back its health workers from Sierra Leone's Ebola hot zone, the Kailahun post, to the capital Freetown after one of their health workers was infected.

"This was the responsible thing to do. The field team has been through a traumatic time through this incident," Daniel Kertesz, WHO Representative in Sierra Leone said in a statement.

"They are exhausted from many weeks of heroic work, helping patients infected with Ebola. When you add a stressor like this, the risk of accidents increases," he added.

WHO on Sunday said an international health worker deployed by WHO has contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone, marked the first time someone working under the aegis of WHO has fallen ill with the disease.

Once the investigation has been completed and appropriate actions have been taken, WHO will move a team back to Kailahun.

Also on Tuesday, the UN agency sent a team to the town near the border with Guinea to do a review of the incident on the colleague who became infected. The team will try to determine how the health worker became infected, review the living and working environment of all the workers, try to identify factors that increase risk of infection, and address these issues.