A physician infected with the Ebola virus died today at the Nebraska Medical Center after being evacuated from Sierra Leone.
Martin Salia was on dialysis, a ventilator and multiple medications after suffering from kidney and respiratory failure, the hospital said today in a statement. He also got a dose of plasma from an Ebola survivor and Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc.’s ZMapp drug.
“We used every possible treatment available to give Dr. Salia every possible opportunity for survival,” Phil Smith, medical director of the hospital’s biocontainment unit, said in the statement. “As we have learned, early treatment with these patients is essential. In Dr. Salia’s case, his disease was already extremely advanced by the time he came here for treatment.”
Salia was chief medical officer and surgeon at Kissy United Methodist Hospital in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone. That facility was closed Nov. 11 after Salia tested positive for Ebola, the United Methodist Church said.
The hospital had said Salia arrived in “extremely critical” condition. He is the sixth doctor in Sierra Leone to be infected with the deadly virus; the other five also died.
The patient, a permanent U.S. resident from Sierra Leone, was evacuated at the request of his wife, who lives in Maryland, the State Department has said.
‘Best Place’
“We are so appreciative of the opportunity for my husband to be treated here and believe he was in the best place possible,” his wife, Isatu Salia, said in the hospital’s statement.
Salia was the third person treated for the deadly virus at Nebraska Medical Center, following a missionary worker, Rick Sacra, and a freelance journalist, Ashoka Mukpo. Both were evacuated from West Africa after becoming infected, and recovered. Neither arrived at the hospital in as grave condition as Salia.
Eight people treated in U.S. hospitals have been cured. The only other person to die of Ebola in the U.S., Thomas Eric Duncan, was initially released from a Dallas hospital in September before returning with worsening symptoms. Two nurses were infected after contact with Duncan; both recovered.
There is no currently approved drug to cure the disease. Severely ill patients require intensive supportive care. They are frequently dehydrated and need intravenous fluids or oral rehydration with solutions that contain electrolytes. The Omaha medical center has a sealed biocontainment unit separate from other areas used to care for patients. Treatment for the Ebola patients has included experimental drugs and blood serum from an Ebola survivor.
The virus has ravaged West Africa, killing more than 5,170, mostly in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.