American arrives for Ebola treatment at NIH clinic
A U.S. health care worker infected with the deadly Ebola virus in Sierra Leone arrived safely Friday to begin treatment at the National Institutes of Health hospital outside Washington.
The unidentified individual was flown back to the facility in Bethesda, Md., in isolation in a chartered aircraft, NIH officials said in a statement.
The patient, who was volunteering in an Ebola treatment unit in West Africa, was admitted at 4:44 a.m. and will be treated at the NIH's Special Clinical Studies Unit, a high-level containment facility.
The unidentified volunteer health worker is the second American infected with Ebola to be admitted to the facility.
Nina Pham, a Dallas nurse, was successfully treated by NIH in October after being infected by Thomas Eric Duncan, a LIberian resident who later died at the Dallas hospital where she worked.
Two other health workers admitted to NIH had "high-risk" exposures to Ebola in West Africa but who did not become sick.
Atlanta's Emory Hospital, Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha and New York's Bellevue Hospital also treated Ebola patients last year.
Only two of the 10 Ebola patients treated for the disease in the United States have died.
The World Health Organization said Thursday that Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia have recorded 24,350 cases of Ebola and 10,004 deaths since the epidemic began more than a year ago.
Contributing: Liz Szabo