US doctor infected with Ebola heads to Nebraska

Associated Press

OMAHA, Neb.

A doctor who was infected with Ebola while working in Liberia is being flown to a Nebraska hospital for treatment, doctors there said Thursday.

Officials at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha said Dr. Rick Sacra, 51, is expected to arrive sometime today. Dr. Sacra will begin treatment in the hospital’s 10-bed special isolation unit, the largest of four such units in the U.S.

Dr. Sacra served with North Carolina-based charity SIM. Its president, Bruce Johnson, said Dr. Sacra was receiving excellent care at a center in Liberia, but that the Nebraska facility provides advanced monitoring equipment and has a wider availability of treatment options.

Dr. Sacra, who’s from the Boston area, opted to head to Liberia after hearing that two other missionaries were sick. He wasn’t involved in the treatment of Ebola patients but delivered babies, so it’s unclear how he got infected with the virus that’s killed about 1,900 people.

He’s the third American aid worker infected by the Ebola.