CNN – by Faith Karimi and Christabelle Fombu
A surgeon diagnosed with Ebola in his native Sierra Leone arrived Saturday afternoon in the United States, where he will undergo treatment at Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.
Doctors judge him to be in “extremely critical condition,” the center said in a statement dated Saturday.
While the statement did not identify the patient, the family of Dr. Martin Salia has previously said he is the patient.
Salia, who is a legal permanent resident of the United States, is married to a U.S. citizen, his relatives told CNN Baltimore affiliate WJZ.
“This is an hour-by-hour situation,” Dr. Phil Smith, medical director of the Biocontainment Unit at Nebraska Medical Center, said in the statement. “He is extremely ill. We have multiple highly-trained specialists who are experts in their fields targeting his most serious medical issues.”
The U.S. Embassy in Freetown confirmed a flight carrying a doctor recently diagnosed with Ebola departed Saturday (11 p.m. ET on Friday) en route to The Nebraska Medical Center. Taylor confirmed a flight landed carrying an Ebola-stricken patient arrived at 3:51 p.m. local time Saturday.
The Sierra Leone team that was caring for the patient characterized him as critically ill, possibly sicker than the first patients successfully treated in the United States, according to an earlier statement from Nebraska Medical Center.
“My sister is very worried and upset,” Salia’s brother-in-law, Ibrahim Kargbo, told CNN, referring to Salia’s wife, Isatu. “Right now, she is pretty devastated. … We’re all just praying he recovers soon.”
The doctor was splitting his time between New Carrollton, Maryland, and Sierra Leone, where he works at a Methodist hospital, WJZ reported.
“He doesn’t think of himself as someone important,” his son, Maada Salia, told WJZ. “He puts himself down and helps those who really need help.”
Salia treated all sorts of patients at the hospital in Sierra Leone — one of three countries most affected by the deadly virus.
“The fact that he left here and went back to his country, that made me worry a little bit, especially when he’s a doctor … because he doesn’t know who has the virus,” his son said.
The evacuation came at the request of his wife, a Maryland resident, who has agreed to reimburse the government for any expense, the U.S. State Department said in a statement. The cost is not known.
An air ambulance crew evaluated him in Freetown this week and determined he was well enough to travel to Omaha.
Nebraska Medical Center is one of four hospitals in the United States with biocontainment units and years of preparation in handling highly infectious disease such as Ebola.
It has successfully treated two American Ebola patients — Dr. Rick Sacra, who was released in September, and Ashoka Mukpo, a freelance NBC cameraman who was discharged last month.
Both contracted the virus in Liberia and were later flown to the United States for treatment.
The virus has killed at least 5,177 people mostly in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, according to the latest figures from the World Health Organization.
Of those, Sierra Leone has reported nearly 1,200 deaths in the outbreak, which started this year.
In a statement, G20 leaders meeting in Brisbane, Australia, said member nations were committed to “do what is necessary to ensure the international effort can extinguish the outbreak,” to “promote safe conditions and training for health care and relief workers,” and “expedite the effective and targeted disbursement of funds and other assistance.”
Eight of the previous nine Ebola patients treated in the United States survived. Liberian national Thomas Eric Duncan, who was treated in Dallas, died last month.
CNN’s Janet DiGiacomo, Ray Sanchez and Elizabeth Cohen contributed to this report.
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/11/15/health/nebraska-ebola-patient/index.html?eref=edition
Is there a living Ebola victim anywhere that we didn’t import into this country?
Personally, I still think it’s all part of the vaccine-peddling (or vaccine mandating) scam, but this practice of bringing these people here is absurd, and we can only hope the general public is starting to see this by now.
“Doctors judge him to be in “extremely critical condition,” the center said in a statement dated Saturday.”
We never see ANY photos of these (alleged) ‘Ebola’ victims in ANY other condition but perfectly healthy looking.
They’re going to have to ramp up the gore factor, if they expect to ramp up the fear factor in the public enough to get them to beg for their toxic ‘vaccine’.
I mean, think about it. We see photos of poor unfortunates who were unlucky enough to get in the way of some cops’ fists and boots, some who were mangled nearly beyond being recognizable by their own mothers.
Yet, not ONE SINGLE PHOTO of an ‘Ebola’ patient in “extremely critical condition”, or even critical condition, or ANY kind of condition AT ALL that would actually indicate at least the APPEARANCE of a DEADLY DISEASE?
seriously?