New Delhi, June 26 -- PARIS - The doctor had gone to the Democratic Republic of Congo to help stop Ebola. On June 24, France's Health Ministry announced that the doctor had come back with it. The confirmed case, the first Ebola patient detected in Western Europe since the current outbreak began, arrived on the same day that the DRC Ministry of Health reported the outbreak had crossed 1,000 confirmed cases, a threshold that makes this the second-largest Ebola epidemic in recorded history.

The French patient, a healthcare worker who had been on a humanitarian mission in an active transmission zone in the DRC, tested positive for the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola upon return. France's Health Ministry said the patient had been placed in isolati...