Dr. Richard Sacra is planning to do what a number of other Ebola survivors and health workers want: go back to West Africa.
Dr. Sacra hogged the headlines last year when he contracted the Ebola virus sometime in August in Liberia. Back then, Dr. Sacra was trying to meet the rigorous demand of health workers who were in deep shortage. It can be recalled that two U.S. health workers, Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol who was then a nurse, had to be brought back to the United States after they were infected.
However, it didn't take long before Sacra also became the patient. He was admitted in Nebraska Medical Center, one of the specialist units for Ebola, and stayed there for almost a month. Aside from an experimental drug, he also received a blood plasma from Dr. Brantly.
After 5 months, he's flying back to Liberia on Thursday, January 15, in order to add more manpower to SIM, the same missionary organization that brought him to West Africa.
Sacra will work in a hospital, not an Ebola clinic, although the problems faced by the latter are now being felt even by established health care facilities. With so many patients to take care of but with a very poor health care system, there's definitely a need for others to step up and contribute-something that Dr. Sacra is more than happy to do.
He also hopes he can be part of a medical school, especially since many of them have already lost several teachers and staff after contracting the disease or leaving the country in the middle of the outbreak.
In a sadder note, Dr. Sacra is preparing himself for the possibility that he may no longer find the same people he used to work with last year, particularly those who have succumbed to the infection.
