New Delhi, June 26 -- PARIS - The doctor boarded an Air France flight from Kinshasa with a headache. He was on his way home from a humanitarian medical mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He did not know, or had not yet accepted, that he was carrying Bundibugyo ebolavirus, the strain responsible for the deadliest Ebola outbreak in 40 years of recorded history.

France confirmed on June 24 that the doctor, whose identity has not been made public, had tested positive for the virus after landing in Paris, becoming the first person diagnosed with this outbreak on European soil. The case marks a new phase in a catastrophe that has now claimed 291 lives in the DRC and is no longer contained, in any meaningful sense, within sub-Saharan ...