Ebola hit Sierra Leone doctor gravely ill in US

Ebola hit Sierra Leone doctor gravely ill in US

Sunday, November 16, 2014 3:24 pm


Dr. Martin Salia: flown to the US

Dr. Martin Salia: flown to the US

A Sierra Leone doctor flown to the US for Ebola treatment is said to be “extremely ill”.

Martin Salia, a US resident and practicing doctor in the Maryland area, who was infected with the deadly hemorrhagic fever while treating patients in his home country, was flown to Nebraska for treatment.

The University of Nebraska Medical Center said Salia arrived in an “extremely critical condition” Saturday from Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown.

“This is an hour-by-hour situation,” said Phil Smith, medical director of the biocontainment unit at UNMC, one of a handful of medical facilities in the United States specially designated to treat Ebola patients.

“He is extremely ill,” Smith said. “We will do everything humanly possible to help him fight this disease.”

Salia is the third Ebola patient to be treated by the UNMC — the previous two survived.

Of the nine Ebola patients treated in the United States before Salia’s arrival, only one has died: Liberian Thomas Eric Duncan.

In sharp contrast, the disease has proved deadly in an estimated 70 percent of cases in west Africa.


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