The third American health worker to be infected with the Ebola virus while on a medical mission in West Africa is now being evacuated to the United States to receive treatment at the Nebraska Medical Center.
According to the international Christian organization SIM USA, Dr. Rick Sacra was treating obstetrics patients at that ELWA Hospital in Monrovia, Liberia, when he began to notice symptoms of the Ebola Virus Disease. His wife, Debbie Sacra, released a statement at a news conference saying, "I just had a call from the doctor who put Rick on the plane to come to United States. He said that Rick is clearly sick, but that he was in very good spirits. He walked onto the plane, so we are really encouraged by that news and looking forward to reuniting with him." Dr. Sacra is expected to arrive in Omaha on Friday morning.
Dr. Sacra is an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School who specializes in family medicine and was practicing in Worcester, Massachusetts before he decided to fly to Liberia in August. His wife said that although he knew there was a high risk that he could contract the Ebola virus, he opted to go to try and help pregnant women and patients with malaria amid the outbreak. At that point, she said that she knew "he needed to go." "He is not someone who can stand back when there is a need that he can take care of," she added.
Around the time that he began to notice the symptoms, he was not treating Ebola patients, and was working at a department away from the cable isolation facility. This makes it unclear how he became infected with the virus, although all the US health workers who had become infected were working at the same ELWA hospital at the time of their infection.