A doctor who became infected with Ebola in Sierra Leone has passed away after being airlifted to Nebraska for treatment.
According to ABC News, Dr. Martin Salia was flown to Nebraska on Saturday after coming down with the deadly disease while he was in Africa. He was taken to a hospital in Omaha and was the third person to have been treated for Ebola at the facility, but the only one who passed away.
Dr. Jeffrey Gold, the chancellor for the medical center at University of Nebraska, said at a press conference, “We are reminded today that even though this was the best possible place for a patient with this virus to be, that in the very advanced stages, even the most modern techniques that we have at our disposal are not enough to help these patients once they reach a critical threshold,” The Guardian reported.
It is uncertain how Salia came down with Ebola since he wasn’t in direct contact with any patients who exhibited symptons of the disease. He underwent two tests for Ebola, with the first showing a negative result. But just four days later on Nov. 10, his results came back positive.
The Washington Post reported that when he arrived at the hospital in Nebraska, he had “nearly no kidney function and was unresponsive.” The doctors treating him tried saving him through a plasma transfucsion that was donated by a survivor of the dease and he was also given a drug called ZMapp.
The hospital’s biocaontainment unit medical director, Phil Smith, said “Dr. Salia was extremely critical when he arrived here, and unfortunately, despite our best efforts, we weren’t able to save him. We are all grieving very hard.”
He also said that Salia’s case was already in an “extremely advanced” state once he arrived in Nebraska.