Foreign Minister Frank‑Walter Steinmeier and Health Minister Hermann Gröhe presented a Lufthansa Airbus converted into rescue transport for Ebola patients at Berlin Tegel airport on 27 November. The “flying isolation unit” is ready for immediate deployment. It is intended to ensure that aid workers who become infected can be flown out to Germany and treated here.
The Lufthansa Airbus “Robert Koch” landed at Berlin Tegel airport shortly before 11 o’clock on Thursday morning (27 November). A large number of journalists and two ministers were there to see it land; Foreign Minister Steinmeier and Health Minister Gröhe were the first to have a look around on board the converted passenger plane.
Ensuring the best possible medical care
Foreign Minister Steinmeier expressed his “great respect” for the many volunteers who were prepared “to go to the region, to help, to care for the sick”.
The German Government, he said, owed it to those aid workers to provide medical care if they should become infected with the Ebola virus.
"We need to plan ahead to make sure that people who catch the disease can come back and receive absolutely the best possible medical treatment during the journey. That is what we have now done with this aircraft."
Aid volunteers can be flown out
Following its conversion, the “Robert Koch” is only vaguely reminiscent of a passenger aircraft. Where seats and luggage compartments were before, it now has a number of airlocks and a hermetically sealed isolation tent. One patient can be transported and treated safely here regardless of his or her highly contagious infection. This means that, if required, this medevac aircraft can be used to fly out aid volunteers from Germany who have become infected with the Ebola virus while working to combat the epidemic.
Work to convert the former passenger plane started on 17 November and was carried out in close cooperation with the Robert Koch Institute — Federal Institute for Infectious and Non‑communicable Diseases. The German Government has leased the Airbus from Lufthansa for an initial period of six months.
Steinmeier and Gröhe thanked Lufthansa and the Robert Koch Institute for the rapid conversion work. They would prefer not to see the aircraft take to the skies too soon, however, as Steinmeier concluded:
"This is probably the only Lufthansa plane that we hope will never or only very rarely need to be deployed."