A fourth American who contracted Ebola in West Africa was expected to
arrive in the US for care on Tuesday and will be treated at an Atlanta
hospital where two other aid workers successfully recovered from the
disease, the hospital said on Monday.
Air Force spokesperson
Lieutenant Colonel James Wilson said the patient, as in past cases,
would be flown into Dobbins Air Reserve Base outside Atlanta.
Emory
University Hospital said in a news release that the patient would be
treated there but cited confidentiality in not releasing more
information about the person.
The World Health Organisation,
however, said one of its doctors who has been working in an Ebola
treatment center in Sierra Leone has tested positive for the disease. It
said the doctor was in stable condition Monday in Freetown and will be
evacuated. The State Department said the doctor was from the US.
Experimental treatments
Last
month, two aid workers who contracted Ebola while working in Liberia
were treated successfully at Emory. A third patient, an American doctor,
who is being treated in Nebraska, appeared to be better tolerating his
experimental treatments on Monday, but his recovery remains uncertain.
The
family of Dr Rick Sacra said he was able to eat breakfast Monday for
the first time since arriving Friday at the Nebraska Medical Centre in
Omaha.
The 51-year-old remains in stable condition. But his wife,
Debbie, said Sacra is more alert and that they had a half-hour
conversation by video conference on Sunday.
"He hasn't been able
to eat much since he got here, but he had some toast and apple sauce,"
Debbie Sacra said. "He also tolerated the research drug well — better
than he had the previous doses he was given."
Rick Sacra, a doctor
from Worcester, Massachusetts, spent 15 years working at the Liberia
hospital where he fell ill. He was practicing family medicine in Liberia
with the North Carolina-based charity SIM.
Authorities say
roughly 2 100 people have died during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa,
but Ebola hasn't been confirmed as the cause of all those deaths.
Isolation units
Sacra
is being treated with an experimental drug that is different than the
one given to the two Americans treated for Ebola at Emory University
Hospital in Atlanta. Nancy Writebol, who also worked for the SIM
mission, and Dr Kent Brantly, who worked for another missionary group,
Samaritan's Purse, in Liberia, have recovered.
Sacra came to Omaha
instead of Atlanta because federal officials asked the medical centre
to treat him in order to prepare other isolation units to take more
Ebola patients if needed.
Sacra's doctors have refused to name the
drug they are using, but they say they've been consulting with experts
on Ebola on his treatment.
Dr Aneesh Mehta of Emory University
said on Monday that it was impossible to know if the experimental ZMapp
they received worked.
But Mehta said Emory doctors have been
advising other physicians that some particular types of supportive care
did seem to help. Those included switching between different types of IV
fluids to meet each patient's specific electrolyte needs at the time.
And giving high-quality liquid nutrition to boost their levels of
protein and other nutrients "to help build back that immune system that
was under attack".
Vaccines for Ebola
Mehta and other experts were discussing Ebola at the American Society for Microbiology meeting on Monday.
Pharmaceutical
companies are developing vaccines for Ebola and drugs to help treat the
virus, but they're not fully tested or readily available yet.
Dr.
Gary Kobinger of the Public Health Agency of Canada helped pioneer the
research that led to ZMapp, and he said the US manufacturer appears to
be on track for a Phase 1 safety study early next year, perhaps as early
as January, although no drug is available currently.
On the vaccine front, Kobinger said a Canadian-made candidate should be starting Phase 1 trials within weeks.
WHO
has suggested turning to the blood of Ebola survivors as an
experimental treatment, and Sacra's doctors have said they are
considering that.
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