3rd American with Ebola delivered babies

Will Elphick, (left) with SIM USA, and SIM President Bruce Johnson, talk about a doctor with the missionary group who contracted Ebola in Liberia.

Will Elphick, (left) with SIM USA, and SIM President Bruce Johnson, talk about a doctor with the missionary group who contracted Ebola in Liberia.

Thursday, September 4, 2014

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- The third U.S. aid worker sickened with Ebola is a Boston-area doctor who decided to go to Liberia after the two others fell ill with the deadly virus, the president of his missionary group said Wednesday.

Dr. Rick Sacra had been in Liberia about a month and was not caring for Ebola patients, but was instead delivering babies at the missionary group's hospital in Liberia, said Bruce Johnson, president of aid group SIM USA.

SIM needed doctors to take care of patients not infected with Ebola, said Will Elthick, director of SIM's operations in Liberia. Sacra followed all protocols to protect himself, Elthick said, and he's in good spirits and able to email.

SIM does not know whether Sacra, who is in isolation, will return to the U.S. for treatment, as the other two Americans did, Johnson said.

Dr. Bruce Ribner, who oversaw the first two missionaries' treatment at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, told NBC's Today show that he also does not know whether the third patient will go there.

"I know there have been discussions that this person will be coming back to the United States," said Ribner, head of the hospital's infectious-disease unit. "I don't believe the actual site where they're coming back has been decided yet."

Dr. Kent Brantly, the first Ebola patient to arrive at Emory, said he knew the latest American to fall ill quite well and has prayed for him and his family, whom he said were "holding up pretty well." Brantly worked for Samaritan's Purse, a missionary group that partners with SIM in Liberia. Both are based in North Carolina.

Nancy Writebol, the second American sickened, said she believes an experimental drug, her medical care and her faith helped save her.

"Those were some very, very dark days," Writebol, 59, said of her illness.

Brantly and Writebol were released last month after being treated in Atlanta. Writebol has been spending time with her husband at an undisclosed location.

In London on Wednesday, a British nurse who contracted Ebola in West Africa also was discharged after being treated, the Royal Free Hospital said.

The nurse, William Pooley, 29, contracted the disease in August while volunteering in Sierra Leone. He was flown to London for 10 days of treatment at the Royal Free Hospital, which has the only high-level isolation unit in Britain, the hospital said in a statement on its website.

Pooley was treated with the experimental drug ZMapp -- the same drug given to Brantly and Writebol. It was previously not tested on humans, and doctors do not know whether the drug contributed to their recovery.

In a separate statement from the hospital, Pooley said he counted himself fortunate to get the treatment he had received in London compared with what he had seen while working in West Africa, where the virus has killed more than 1,900 people.

Elsewhere on Wednesday, the World Health Organization said an ill doctor in southern Nigeria exposed dozens of people to the Ebola virus by continuing to treat patients before his death.

Officials in Nigeria had believed Ebola was largely contained within Africa's most populous country after a sick traveler from Liberia took the disease to Lagos. However, a man who had had contact with the sick visitor later evaded his surveillance and traveled to the oil hub of Port Harcourt where he triggered a second cluster of cases.

A Port Harcourt doctor and another patient there are now dead, and the doctor's widow and sister are sick with Ebola. About 60 other people are under surveillance after having "high-risk" or "very high-risk" contact with the infected doctor, WHO said. More than 140 others also are being monitored.

"Given these multiple high-risk exposure opportunities, the outbreak of Ebola virus disease in Port Harcourt has the potential to grow larger and spread faster than the one in Lagos," the WHO warned.

Nigeria's health minister said there is no reason for people to panic in Port Harcourt. But the United Nations health agency said it feared that civil unrest and public fear of Ebola could further the crisis, saying "military escorts are needed for movements into the isolation and treatment center."

Nigeria's Ebola toll so far has been limited in comparison to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea where hundreds have died in each country. The fatalities in Port Harcourt raised the national toll to seven.

The man who infected the Port Harcourt doctor was found after a four-day manhunt and is recovering, officials said.

Information for this article was contributed by Mitch Weiss, Krista Larson, Maria Cheng, Sarah DiLorenzo and Gregory Katz of The Associated Press; and by Dan Bilefsky of The New York Times.

A Section on 09/04/2014