Sierra Leone doctor treated in US for Ebola; IMF vows aid
Print Edition
A doctor said to be “extremely ill” after being infected with Ebola in Sierra Leone was being treated in the United States yesterday, while the world’s most powerful economies vowed to “extinguish” the deadly epidemic.
Martin Salia, a US resident who was infected with the deadly hemorrhagic fever while treating patients in his home country, was flown to Nebraska for treatment.
World leaders meeting at the G20 summit in the Australian city of Brisbane said they were prepared “to do what is necessary to ensure the international effort can extinguish the outbreak.”
Ebola has killed more than 5,100 people, mostly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, since the outbreak began earlier this year.
Mali was also scrambling to halt a new outbreak of the disease that has killed three people in the desert nation, despite hopeful signs elsewhere in Africa.
Liberia has lifted its state of emergency and the Democratic Republic of Congo announced the end of its own outbreak of the disease.
In Brisbane, G20 members welcomed an International Monetary Fund plan to release US$300 million to fight Ebola and promised to share best practices on protecting health workers on the front line.
In the United States, attention was focused on the University of Nebraska Medical Center where Salia arrived in an “extremely critical condition” on Saturday from Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown where he had gone to treat Ebola patients.
“This is an hour-by-hour situation,” said Phil Smith, medical director of the biocontainment unit at UNMC, one of a handful of medical facilities in the US specially designated to treat Ebola patients.
“He is extremely ill,” Smith said. “We will do everything humanly possible to help him fight this disease.”
Salia is the third Ebola patient to be treated by the UNMC; the previous two survived.
Of the nine Ebola patients treated in the US before Salia’s arrival, only one has died: Liberian Thomas Eric Duncan.
In sharp contrast, the disease has proved deadly in an estimated 70 percent of cases in west Africa.
The G20 pledge came as Togo, whose president is coordinating the west African fight, warned that the world “cannot relax efforts” despite some encouraging signals.
Senegal said last Friday that it was reopening its air and sea borders with Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, although its land border with Guinea will remain closed.
The news came a day after Liberia lifted its state of emergency after announcing huge gains in fighting Ebola.
The DR Congo — where a three-month outbreak of a different strain of the disease claimed at least 49 lives since August — declared itself Ebola-free on Saturday.
But Mali is the latest source of concern, where there are fears an isolated outbreak could spark a major crisis after the deaths of three people infected by a Guinean imam who died of Ebola.
A fourth person, a doctor at the Bamako clinic where the cleric died, is in intensive care.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
