All news

US citizen who contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone to be flown home for treatment

WASHINGTON, March 13. /TASS/. An American healthcare worker contracted Ebola while "volunteering services in an Ebola treatment unit in Sierra Leone," the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) said on Thursday.

The individual "will be transported back to the United States in isolation via a chartered aircraft," NIH said in a press release. "The individual will be admitted and treated at the NIH Clinical Center Special Clinical Studies Unit, a high-level containment facility which is one of a small number of such facilities in the United States," it noted. "No additional details about the patient are being shared at this time," it said.

This is not the first Ebola case in the US. A Liberian man died from the disease in Texas, while two nurses and a doctor who contracted Ebola underwent treatment and recovered.

EBOLA DEATH TOLL NEARS 10,000

The number of people killed by the Ebola virus disease (EVD) has reached 9,976, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a report Wednesday. A total of 24,282 cases of the Ebola virus disease have been reported, the statement said.

In line with statistics, the maximum number of Ebola-related deaths has been registered in Liberia. There have been a total of 4,162 cumulative deaths and 9,343 cumulative cases in the country. Liberia is followed by Sierra Leone (3,629 deaths and 11,619 cases) and Guinea (2,170 and 3,285 respectively).

Separate cases have also been registered in Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Spain, Britain and the United States.

EBOLA VIRUS DISEASE

The Ebola virus disease, previously known as the Ebola hemorrhagic fever, is a severe illness in humans, often fatal, according to the WHO. The virus is passed on to people from wild animals and can be transmitted from humans to humans. The average EVD case death rate is some 50%

The first outbreaks of the EVD occurred in remote Central African villages, near tropical rainforests. However, major urban and rural areas have been involved in the most recent outbreak in western Africa.

Early supportive care, which includes rehydration and symptomatic treatment, improves the survival rate. No licensed treatment has yet been proven to be able to neutralize the virus but a number of blood, immunological and drug medications are under development. There are no licensed Ebola vaccines yet but two candidates are being evaluated.