After his medical work in Sierra Leone, a surgeon will be arriving in the United States this Saturday to receive treatment for Ebola.
Dr. Martin Salia, a general surgeon assigned at the Kissy United Methodist Hospital in Freetown, had been diagnosed with Ebola after testing positive last Tuesday.
Sierra Leone's chief medical officer Dr. Brima Kargbo has stated that the plane carrying Salia has already left Freetown at 2:30 (GMT). He is expected to arrive on Saturday afternoon.
Salia and his family are permanent residents of Maryland and, according to the U.S. State Department, Salia's wife has requested for an investigation to ascertain her husband's health status and whether he can endure the travel to Nebraska where he will receive treatment.
Located in Omaha, the Nebraska Medical Center where Salia will be admitted in has already provided treatment to a number of Ebola patients in the U.S. The surgeon will be the third patient to receive treatment for Ebola in the said facility.
Last November 6, Salia had already exhibited symptoms of Ebola including a fever and headache but his tests showed negative results for the virus. A third test, however, showed that he was infected with Ebola.
Salia is the tenth person to be treated for Ebola in the U.S.; nine patients have also received treatment in the country with which one has died from the lethal virus.
Currently, there are no individual or widespread cases of Ebola within the U.S. On the other hand, Sierra Leone has been reported as one of the West African countries with the highest number of Ebola cases this 2014.
Aside from Salia, five other physicians in the country have been diagnosed with Ebola and all of them have died.
Other nations where the killer virus has become widespread include Liberia and Guinea; all in all, almost 15,000 individuals have already been infected with Ebola in West Africa and over 5,000 of these have already died.
