Third American Worker Infected With Ebola Arrives in Nebraska Hospital

A doctor infected with the Ebola virus while working in Liberia arrived at the Nebraska Medical center for treatment on Friday.

Dr Rick Sacra, 51, is the third American aid worker who has contracted the disease.

Sacra will be treated at a 10- bed special isolation unit on the seventh floor of the hospital, said officials at Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, reports Fox News.

A team of 35 doctors, along with other medical staff will take care of Sacra, said Dr. Phil Smith, the medical director of the Omaha unit.

However, health workers are worried about the availability of the drug Zmapp, which was given to seven other Ebola patients, five of whom survived. Since the drug is in early stage of development, the manufacturers have only a limited stock with them, reports USA Today.

Zmapp is constituted of  a mix of manmade antibodies, which aid the immune system in fighting Ebola.

 The team is now thinking about new treatments like using the blood serum of a patient who has recovered from Ebola, Smith said.

Doctors at the Nebraska hospital have assured that the public has no cause for worry due to Sacra's transfer to the hospital, since Ebola is transmitted only through close contact with an infected person, reports Fox News.

Sacra had worked in Liberia for 15 years for the North Carolina-based charity SIM, coming occasionally to the US. For the past one year, he was working at the Family Health Center of Worcester. But when he heard that two other health care workers of the charity got infected with Ebola, he went back to Liberia on Aug. 1.

He was not involved in treating people infected with Ebola, but delivered babies and treated other people.

Sacra's wife Debbie said at a news conference that both of them knew that there was a risk of Ebola infection when Sacra left for Liberia.

"I knew he needed to be with the Liberian people." "He was so concerned about the children that were going to die from malaria without hospitalization and the women who had no place to go to deliver their babies by cesarean section. He's not someone who can stand back if there's a need he can take care of," she said, reports Fox News.