The British army carried out an exceptional operation above the Tristan da Cunha archipelago, in the South Atlantic, to rescue a man considered to be a suspected case of hantavirus. Saturday May 9, soldiers and medical equipment were parachuted into this British overseas territory inaccessible by plane, we learned in the daily newspaper The Sun.
According to London, the health emergency left only one option. The island’s oxygen reserves were considered critical and no aircraft could land there. “An airdrop of medical personnel was the only way to provide life-saving care to the patient in time.â€indicated the British Ministry of Defense on X.
Six paratroopers and two military nurses from the 16th airborne brigade were sent to the scene with oxygen cylinders and emergency equipment. The operation required a long journey from the United Kingdom, with a passage through Ascension Island then an in-flight refueling before reaching Tristan da Cunha, more than 3,000 km away.
British Ministry of Defense / AFP
In this image released on May 10, members of the British armed forces drop medical equipment over the Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha to help a British national who contracted the hantavirus aboard the expedition ship MV Hondius.
The patient concerned had traveled on board the MV Hondiusthe cruise ship affected by an outbreak of hantavirus. He had landed on the island during a stopover organized in mid-April. British health authorities announced that this was in addition to two already confirmed cases.
A “operation extraordinaire »
This intervention is presented as “a first» by the British Ministry of Defence, which claims to have never before deployed medical personnel by parachute as part of a humanitarian mission.
British Armed Forces Minister Al Carns welcomed “an extraordinary operation in incredibly difficult circumstances†to provide emergency aid to the island’s inhabitants.
Tristan da Cunha has only 221 inhabitants. Located nearly 2,800 kilometers from the South African coast, the island lives almost cut off from the rest of the world and depends on maritime connections for its supplies.
AFP PHOTO / CROWN COPYRIGHT 2026Â / RAF / Cpl SARAH BARSBY
Members of the Royal Air Force drop medical equipment over the Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha to help a British national who contracted the hantavirus aboard the expedition ship MV Hondius.
At the same time, several passengers of the MV Hondius were repatriated to Europe. In France, five travelers were hospitalized on Sunday after their arrival at Le Bourget and placed in quarantine for 72 hours.
Hantavirus is a rare disease transmitted primarily by infected rodents. But experts confirmed that the virus variant detected on board the ship, Andes hantavirus, was a rare strain that can be transmitted from human to human with an incubation period of up to six weeks.
