An Italian nurse who had recently been working in Sierra Leone with medical charity Emergency tested positive for Ebola on Tuesday in the country's second case of the virus.

The health ministry said in a statement that the male nurse was in an infectious diseases ward of a hospital at Sassari on the island of Sardinia, awaiting transfer by a specially-equipped airforce plane to a Rome clinic that cured Italy's first Ebola victim, a doctor who had also worked for Emergency in Sierra Leone.

The nurse began displaying possible symptoms of the virus on Sunday evening, two days after arriving home from Africa, the ministry said. Tests confirmed he had contracted the disease that has killed more than 4,700 people in its latest outbreak in West Africa.

The doctor who was successfully treated at the Lazzaro Spallanzani clinic in Rome was evacuated from Sierra Leone in mid-November. The 50-year-old left hospital in January following treatment with a combination of experimental drugs and the blood plasma of an Ebola survivor.