Nebraska Medical Center released a statement early Sunday saying that doctors treating a surgeon who contracted the Ebola virus while working in Sierra Leone is in a life-threatening condition. According to the doctors, the patient is "extremely ill."
"Information coming from the team caring for him in Sierra Leone indicates he is critically ill - possibly sicker than the first patients successfully treated in the United States," the hospital said.
Dr. Martin Salia, a surgeon who was diagnosed with Ebola on Nov. 10, arrived in Omaha on Saturday to be treated at the Nebraska Medical Center's bio-containment unit. As per a Yahoo! News report, a physician overseeing Salia's treatment, Dr. Phil Smith said that the 44-year-old surgeon is in "extremely critical condition."
"We will do everything humanly possible to help him fight this disease." He also added that a team of specialists is treating Salia's most serious issues," Smith said Sunday.
Nebraska Medical Center said that the medical team treating the surgeon with Ebola were using an extreme amount of supportive care possible in an attempt to save his life. Fox News reported that the head of the hospital's bio-containment unit described the treatments as "an hour-by-hour situation."
"We have multiple highly-trained specialists who are experts in their fields targeting his most serious medical issues..." Dr. Smith said. "Ebola produces symptoms that can obviously create a life-threatening situation for the patient. But he couldn't be surrounded by a more caring, compassionate and talented group of people."
Salia, a Sierra Leone citizen who lives in Maryland, has been working as a general surgeon at Kissy United Methodist Hospital in the Sierra Leone capital of Freetown. It's not clear whether he was involved in the care of Ebola patients. He first showed Ebola symptoms on Nov. 6 but tested negative for the virus. On Nov. 10, he eventually tested positive.
In West Africa, Ebola has killed over 5,000 people and mostly in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. This year, Sierra Leone is one of the West African countries struck hard by an Ebola outbreak. Aside from Salia, five other doctors in Sierra Leone have been infected with Ebola, and all have died.
Dr. Salia, a surgeon with Ebola, is the tenth person treated for the virus in the US. BBC News said all but one, a Liberian man named Thomas Eric Duncan, have recovered. Meanwhile, France has warned its people not to travel to Mali, following the deaths of three people there from Ebola.
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