An American health worker being treated for Ebola has improved from critical to serious condition, the National Institutes of Health said Thursday.
The patient is one of 17 staffers working for the non-profit Partners in Health evacuated from Sierra Leone earlier this month. Neither group is identifying the patient in any way except to say he or she was working at an Ebola clinic the charity operates.
The other 16 Partners in Health staffers were evacuated after a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention investigation showed they’d had a risky exposure either to the U.S. patient or to a Sierra Leonean doctor at the clinic who was also infected. The clinic has since closed, but a spokeswoman for Partners in Health said the clinic was closing anyway for a lack of patients.
The 16 U.S. staffers are under a 21-day watch to make sure they don't develop symptoms. They're all close to clinics where they could be treated quickly if they do.
Ebola’s infected close to 25,000 people in west Africa and killed more than 10,000 of them.
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