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The patient was taken by ambulance from the Omaha airport to
the University of Nebraska Medical Center, where three other
patients were treated last year, said Taylor Wilson, hospital
spokesman.
Wilson would not disclose the age or gender of the patient, whom
he said was flown directly from Sierre Leone to Omaha in an air
ambulance.
The patient has not tested positive for Ebola but will be
treated at the hospital’s Biocontainment Unit using the same
precautions taken with those who had the disease, Wilson said.
Two of those patients were treated successfully and a third,
gravely ill upon arrival, died.
“There will be 21 days of monitoring and if the disease does
develop, obviously treatment would begin pretty quickly,” Wilson
said.
Ebola is a hemorrhagic fever. The latest outbreak, first
identified in Guinea's remote southeast in early 2014, has
struck six West African nations, with Guinea, Sierra Leone and
Liberia bearing the brunt of the 20,000 infections and nearly
8,000 dead.
(Reporting by Kevin Murphy in Kansas City; Editing by Michael
Perry)
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