A surgeon from Sierra Leone who was being treated for Ebola at a Nebraska hospital has died, according to a statement from the hospital.
Dr Martin Salia, a permanent US resident, is the second patient to die of Ebola in the US. He arrived in Omaha on Saturday, having left Freetown on Friday by air ambulance. He was immediately transported to Nebraska medical center, where he began treatment.
“It is with an extremely heavy heart that we share this news,” Dr Phil Smith, medical director of the Biocontainment Unit at Nebraska medical center and professor of infectious diseases at the University of Nebraska medical center, the hospital’s academic partner, said in a statement on Monday. “Dr Salia was extremely critical when he arrived here, and unfortunately, despite our best efforts, we weren’t able to save him.”
Salia, 44, was not able to walk off the plane, as other patients brought to the US have been able to do. Instead, he was taken off the plane in an isopod, a special device designed to keep contagion from spreading. He was placed on a stretcher and loaded into an ambulance.