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Ebola doctor headed to UNMC

November 14, 2014

A Sierra Leone surgeon with Ebola is awaiting clearance to fly to the US for treatment. The outbreak has killed more than 5,100 people and infected nearly 15,000 in total, almost all in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

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Ebola
Image: Reuters/Bimmer

In stable condition in Freetown, Dr. Martin Salia, a 44-year-old Sierra Leone citizen and US resident, could head to University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) in Omaha, according to news agencies, making him the third patient with the virus at the hospital and the 10th treated in the United States. Salia, a general surgeon who has worked at Kissy United Methodist Hospital in Freetown, came down with symptoms of Ebola on November 6, but a test for the virus turned out negative. Doctors tested him again on Monday, and the results came back positive.

"He will be evaluated by the medical crew on the Phoenix Air jet upon their arrival in Sierra Leone," the UNMC announced in a statement, though the hospital declined to confirm that it had accepted Salia for treatment, or indeed that he was the patient to be evaluated. "The members of the crew will determine whether the patient is stable enough for transport - if he is, he would arrive in Omaha sometime Saturday afternoon."

The UNMC - one of four US hospitals with specialized units for highly infectious diseases - would receive the latest patient because workers at units at Atlanta's Emory University Hospital and the National Institutes of Health near Washington remain in a 21-day monitoring period. Those hospitals treated two Dallas nurses infected while caring for Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian man diagnosed with Ebola shortly after arriving in the United States, and the only person to die of the virus in the US so far.

On Tuesday, a New York City hospital released Dr. Craig Spencer after his successful recovery. The United States currently has no diagnosed cases of Ebola.

Liberia lifted its Ebola state of emergency on Thursday, after recent advances in the fight against the virus there, including the opening of a new German-funded treatment center. Despite the relatively positive news from the United States and Liberia, the UN has raised the Ebola death toll to over 5,000, and Mali has experienced two recent deaths from the virus, raising fears that it had not been as well-contained in the country as previously thought. Clinical trials for a new Ebola drug are set to begin before the end of the year.

mkg/glb (Reuters, AFP, AP)