A doctor who contracted Ebola while working in Sierra Leone was transported to the U.S. for treatment on Saturday. Surgeon Martin Salia is a citizen of Sierra Leone and a permanent resident of the U.S., residing in Maryland. Salia was admitted to the Nebraska Medical Center’s biocontainment unit on Saturday and is in extremely critical condition, according to the hospital. Salia is “possibly sicker than the first patients successfully treated in the United States,” the hospital said in a statement. The director of the biocontainment unit described Salia’s health-status as “an hour-by-hour situation.”
Salia is the third patient to be treated by the Nebraska facility that has successfully treated its previous cases of Ebola. It’s not altogether clear how exactly the 44-year-old contracted the virus. The surgeon was working in Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, when he developed symptoms around Nov. 6. Salia tested positive for Ebola days later on Nov. 10. “The State Department said in a statement that it had facilitated Dr. Salia’s evacuation at the request of his wife, who said she had agreed to reimburse the U.S. government for the expense,” the Wall Street Journal reports. The cost of the emergency evacuation is estimated to be more than $100,000.
