Another American healthcare worker has been infected with Ebola and will be admitted to a special unit at the National Institutes of Health on Friday, the NIH says.
“The individual was volunteering services in an Ebola treatment unit in Sierra Leone and will be transported back to the United States in isolation via a chartered aircraft,” the NIH said in a statement.
“The individual will be admitted and treated at the NIH Clinical Center Special Clinical Studies Unit, a high-level containment facility in Bethesda, Maryland - one of a small number of such facilities in the United States. No additional details about the patient are being shared at this time.”
It’s the same unit where nurse Nina Pham was treated and where a doctor and a nurse who were suspected of having been exposed to Ebola – but who both escaped infection – were kept under watch.
Eight Americans, including seven health care workers, have been infected with Ebola. All have survived.
They include medical missionaries Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, both treated at Emory University Hospital and Dr. Rick Sacra, treated at the University of Nebraska; Dr. Ian Crozier, infected in Sierra Leone and treated at Emory; Dr. Craig Spencer, infected in Guinea and treated at Bellevue Hospital in New York; and nurses Pham and Amber Vinson who were infected while treating Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian traveler who turned up sick in Dallas.
Ebola’s infected more than 24,000 people in West Africa and killed 10,000 or more of them. The World Health Organization says more than 800 of these are health care workers such as doctors or nurses, and more than 400 of them have died.
Of the 10 people treated for Ebola so far int he United States, eight have survived. Two -- Duncan and Sierra Leonean Dr. Martin Salia -- have died.
IN-DEPTH:
- Guinea Ebola Vaccine Study Uses Smallpox Strategy
- Liberia's Last Ebola Patient Leaves Clinic
- Report Points to 28 Countries At Ebola Risk
-- Maggie Fox
