Surgeon with Ebola to be transferred from Sierra Leone to US for care

A surgeon working in Sierra Leone who was diagnosed with Ebola will be flown to the Nebraska on Saturday for treatment, officials from Sierra Leone and the United States said.

The Omaha-based Nebraska Medical Center will treat Dr. Martin Salia for Ebola, Sierra Leone's chief medical officer, Dr. Brima Kargbo, told The Associated Press on Friday. 

The U.S. Embassy said Salia himself was paying for the expensive evacuation. Salia is a general surgeon who had been working at Kissy United Methodist Hospital in Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown.

Patients, including mothers who hours earlier had given birth, reportedly fled from the 60-bed hospital after news of the Ebola case emerged, the United Methodist News Service reported.

The hospital was closed on Tuesday after Salia tested positive, and he was taken to the Hastings Ebola Treatment Center near Freetown, the church news service said. Kissy hospital staffers will be quarantined for 21 days.

A citizen of Sierra Leone, the 44-year-old Salia lives in Maryland and is a permanent U.S. resident, according to a person in the U.S. with direct knowledge of the situation. The person was not authorized to release the information and spoke on condition of anonymity. 

The doctor will be the third Ebola patient at the Omaha hospital and the 10th person with Ebola to be treated in the U.S. The last, Dr. Craig Spencer, was released from a New York hospital on Tuesday.

The Nebraska Medical Center said Thursday it had no official confirmation that it would be treating another patient, but that an Ebola patient in Sierra Leone who would be evaluated for possible transport to the hospital would arrive Saturday afternoon. 

Salia came down with Ebola symptoms on Nov. 6, but test results were negative for the deadly virus. He was tested again on Monday, and he tested positive. Salia is in stable condition at an Ebola treatment center in Freetown. 

It remained clear whether he had been involved in the care of Ebola patients. Kissy is not an Ebola treatment unit, but Salia worked at at least three other medical facilities, United Methodist News said, citing health ministry sources. 

Sierra Leone is one of the three West Africa nations, along with Guinea and Liberia, hit the hardest by an Ebola epidemic this year. Five other doctors in Sierra Leone have contracted Ebola, and all have died. In total, the disease has killed more than 5,000 people in West Africa.

The hospital in Omaha is one of four U.S. facilities with specialized treatment units for people with highly dangerous infectious diseases. It was chosen for the latest patient because Ebola treatment workers from Atlanta's Emory University Hospital and the National Institutes of Health near Washington are still in a 21-day monitoring period. 

Those two hospitals treated two Dallas nurses who were infected while caring for Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian man who fell ill with Ebola shortly after arriving in the U.S. and later died. 

The other eight Ebola patients in the U.S. recovered, including the nurses. Five were American aid workers who became infected in West Africa while helping care for patients there; one was a journalist who had contributed to Al Jazeera.

The Associated Press