Fourth American infected by Ebola in Africa to fly to US for treatment

Washington: A fourth Ebola patient will be flown to the United States by air ambulance from West Africa to receive treatment for the deadly disease, hospital officials in Atlanta said on Monday. [caption id=“attachment_1699481” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image. AFP[/caption] The patient is expected to arrive at Emory University Hospital early on Tuesday and will be treated in the same isolation unit as two other patients who were discharged after recovering from the virus, the hospital said in a statement. The hospital did not provide any information on the new patient, citing confidentiality rules. The World Health Organization said earlier on Monday that one of its doctors stationed in an Ebola treatment center in Sierra Leone had tested positive for the disease. The doctor was in stable condition in Freetown and would be evacuated soon, the WHO said. The patient’s name and nationality were not disclosed in the statement. Medical workers have been hit hard by the epidemic, the worst since Ebola was discovered in 1976. As of late August, more than 240 healthcare workers had developed the disease and more than 120 had died, the WHO said. The outbreak has killed some 2,100 people overall in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria, and has also spread to Senegal. A US medical missionary infected with the Ebola virus in Liberia is being treated at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, where on Monday he was able to eat breakfast and listen to music, his wife said in a statement. Two other US missionaries who contracted the disease in Liberia in July also were treated and released from Emory, where they were given the experimental drug ZMapp. No more doses of ZMapp are available, and doctors have said it is not clear whether the drug helped their recovery. Emory’s isolation unit is equipped with unique tools and infrastructure that provide a high level of clinical isolation for people exposed to serious infectious diseases, the hospital said. Reuters