An American doctor who contracted Ebola while working in Liberia is seriously ill, but stable, at Nebraska Medical Center.
NMC doctors updated Dr. Rick Sacra’s condition during a news conference Friday. Sacra arrived in Omaha Friday morning. He’s being treated in NMC’s biocontainment unit with an IV, fluids, and medication. Sacra tested positive for Ebola on Monday while working in the obstetrics unit of a hospital in Liberia.
Dr. Mark Rupp, Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at NMC, expects the unit will be treating Dr. Sacra for a while.
"We would anticipate, of course, similar to what our colleagues saw at Emory, that we know we’re in for a long haul. This might be a two or three week period of time that our patient goes through a convalescent period of time. We know the natural history of Ebola virus, the incubation period being somewhere in the neighborhood of two days to as long as three weeks."
Dr. Rupp says their biggest concern is the lack of a specific treatment for Ebola. He says doctors are looking in to experimental treatments. A drug used to treat two other Americans infected with the virus is no longer available.
Dr. Sacra is from Massachusetts. He’d done mission work at a hospital in Liberia for 25 years, and was previously evacuated twice due to war in that nation.