New Ebola Patient in Nebraska in Critical Condition

A 44-year-old surgeon under treatment for Ebola in Omaha, Neb., is in extremely critical condition, the hospital said Sunday.

Martin Salia was admitted on Saturday to the Nebraska Medical Center’s biocontainment unit after he was evacuated from Freetown, Sierra Leone.

“This is an hour-by-hour situation,” said Philip Smith, medical director of the biocontainment unit and a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, the hospital’s academic partner. “He is extremely ill. We have multiple highly trained specialists who are experts in their fields targeting his most serious medical issues.”

“We will do everything humanly possible to help him fight this disease,” Dr. Smith said.

The biocontainment unit is experienced with Ebola; Dr. Salia is its third patient with the disease. But he appears to be in far more critical condition than the unit’s previous two Ebola patients.

Dr. Salia is a surgeon at Connaught Hospital and Kissy United Methodist Hospital, both in Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital. A Sierra Leone national and permanent resident of the U.S., he travels between Sierra Leone and Maryland, where his family lives, according to his wife, Isatu Salia.

It isn’t clear how he contracted the disease. He developed symptoms around Nov. 6 and tested positive on Nov. 10.

The State Department said in a statement it had facilitated Dr. Salia’s evacuation at the request of his wife, who said she had agreed to reimburse the U.S. for the expense. The United Methodist Church has been in contact with his family and is working to set up a fund for donations to help pay for the medical flight, a church spokeswoman said.

Dr. Salia is a 2008 graduate of a training program run by the Pan-African Academy of Christian Surgeons, a North Carolina-based nonprofit that works to boost health care in African countries. The group said on Facebook that he had been serving in Sierra Leone since then.

Bruce Steffes, executive director of PAACS, said Dr. Salia owed a year of medical service for each of the four years of tuition-free surgery training he received. Starting in 2012, he could have gone into private practice in Sierra Leone or moved full time to the U.S., but he felt called by his faith to keep working at charity hospitals, Dr. Steffes said, a retired general surgeon living in North Carolina. “He’s probably one of the finest surgeons in the country,” Dr. Steffes said, referring to Sierra Leone.

Ms. Salia is a licensed practical nurse, according to the Maryland Board of Nursing’s online records. The Salias also have two sons, ages 12 and 20.

Ms. Salia said she spoke to her husband on Friday by phone and he told her he would be coming to the U.S. on Saturday. “His voice was weak,” she said, but he seemed stable. “I told him he should not give up, he should fight,” she said.

Dr. Salia had remained in Sierra Leone amid the Ebola outbreak because “he just loves to help the sick and suffering,” his wife said.

Dr. Salia is the 10th person to be treated for Ebola in the U.S. He arrived just four days after a New York City doctor was discharged, after becoming infected while working in Guinea and developing symptoms once he arrived home. The doctor, Craig Spencer, had been the last in a small wave of Ebola patients to be treated in U.S. hospitals in recent weeks.

Nebraska Medical Center has one of four U.S. facilities to handle patients with severe infectious diseases. Its doctors and nurses are now quite familiar with Ebola. Rick Sacra, a missionary doctor, and Ashoka Mukpo, a freelance journalist, were successfully treated there for Ebola in September and October.

Dr. Salia’s evacuation underscores the likelihood that U.S. hospitals will continue to receive and treat Ebola patients until the epidemic is quelled in West Africa. More than 14,000 people have been infected since the epidemic began 11 months ago, and more than 5,100 have died.

U.S. health officials said that, starting Monday, anyone arriving in the U.S. from Mali will undergo the same screening procedures that are in place for travelers from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, the Associated Press reported Sunday. Mali isn’t suffering a widespread Ebola outbreak, but federal officials are concerned about a new cluster of illnesses there, according to the AP.