Second Ebola patient dies in the US

A surgeon who was infected with Ebola while treating patients in his home country, Sierra Leone has died in the United States. The surgeon, Martin Salia, was a Sierra Leonean resident in the US. 

He was flown to Nebraska on Saturday for treatment but doctors said his organs were failing by the time he arrived.

He becomes the second patient in the United States to die of the hemorrhagic virus. The first was a Liberian, Thomas Eric Duncan, who died of the virus at a Texas Hospital in October.

A statement by doctors at the Nebraska Medical Centre said in a statement: “Dr. Salia was suffering from advanced symptoms of Ebola when he arrived at the hospital Saturday, which included kidney and respiratory failure,” the Nebraska Medical Center in a statement.

“He was placed on dialysis, a ventilator and multiple medications to support his organ systems in an effort to help his body fight the disease.”

He was also given donated plasma from an Ebola survivor as well as the experimental drug treatment ZMapp.

Nebraska Medical Center had previously treated two patients successfully - Rick Sacra, a US missionary doctor and a freelance photojournalist, Ashoka Mukpo, who were both infected in Liberia.

Salia was the 10th Ebola patient to be treated in the United States.

He and his wife lived in New Carrollton, Maryland, a suburb of the US capital Washington. They have two children, age 12 and 20.

According to the World Health Organization, 5,177 people are known to have died of Ebola across eight countries, out of a total 14,413 cases of infection, since December 2013.