A Maryland surgeon diagnosed with the deadly Ebola virus after treating patients in Sierra Leone will return to the U.S. Saturday to begin treatment.
Dr. Martin Salia will be treated at the Nebraska Medical Center, Sierra Leone’s chief medical officer, Dr. Brima Kargbo, told The Associated Press. Salia is reportedly paying for his own evacuation.
Salia is a general surgeon who had been working at Kissy United Methodist Hospital in the Sierra Leone capital of Freetown. Patients, including mothers who hours earlier had given birth, fled from the 60-bed hospital after news of the Ebola case emerged, United Methodist News 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 Sierra Leone citizen, the 44-year-old lives in Maryland and is a permanent U.S. resident, according to a person in the United States with direct knowledge of the situation. The person was not authorized to release the information and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Salia is the tenth person with Ebola to be treated in the U.S. He will be the third Ebola patient at the Omaha-area hospital. The surgeon is now in stable condition at an Ebola treatment center in Freetown, Sierra Leone.
So far, the deadly virus has killed more than 5,000 in the West African nations of Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia.
SOURCE: AP | VIDEO SOURCE: News Inc.
