OMAHA — A doctor who became infected with Ebola while working in Liberia is sick but in stable condition and communicating with his caregivers at the Nebraska Medical Center, officials said Friday.
Dr. Rick Sacra, 51, is being treated at a 10-bed special isolation unit, the largest of the United States’ four such units. It was built to handle patients with highly infectious and deadly diseases, said Dr. Mark Rupp, chief of the infectious diseases division at the center.
Sacra, the third American aid worker sickened with the virus, arrived at 6:38 a.m. Friday at the Omaha hospital. Sacra was taken off the plane on a gurney at Offutt Air Force Base, transferred to an ambulance and transported to the hospital, said Rosanna Morris, chief nursing officer for the medical center.
Sacra was conscious Friday and was able to communicate with the medical staff, Morris said.
Sacra went to Omaha instead of Atlanta, where two previous Ebola patients were treated, because federal officials asked the center to treat him to prepare other isolation units to take Ebola patients if needed.
