Doctor With Ebola Arrives In US From Sierra Leone
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A surgeon who contracted Ebola while working in Sierra Leone is now in Nebraska where he's being treated at the same biocontainment unit that helped two other people recover from the disease .
Dr. Martin Salia (sah-LEE'-uh), who was diagnosed with Ebola on Monday, landed in Omaha on Saturday afternoon and was taken by ambulance to the Nebraska Medical Center.
The hospital says the medical crew that accompanied the 44-year-old Salia from West Africa determined he was stable enough to fly, but that the team caring for him in Sierra Leone indicated he was critically ill and "possibly sicker than the first patients successfully treated in the United States."
Salia was working as a general surgeon at Kissy United Methodist Hospital in the Sierra Leone capital, Freetown, which is not an Ebola treatment unit.
The disease has killed more than 5,000 people in West Africa, mostly in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leona. Of the 10 people treated for the disease in the U.S., all but one has recovered.
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