This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/06/nbc-photojournalist-diagnosed-ebola-nebraska

The article has changed 6 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 0 Version 1
American photojournalist diagnosed with Ebola lands in Nebraska American photojournalist diagnosed with Ebola lands in Nebraska
(about 3 hours later)
A plane carrying an American photojournalist who contracted Ebola while working in Liberia landed on Monday in Nebraska, where he will undergo treatment for the deadly disease. The fifth American to contract Ebola in west Africa arrived in Omaha on Monday morning, as the first patient diagnosed with the disease in the US fights for his life in Dallas.
The specially equipped plane Ashoka Mukpo landed at Eppley airfield in Omaha at around 7.30am on Monday. An ambulance was waiting to take him to the Nebraska Medical Center’s specialized isolation unit, which is about a 20-minute ride from the airport. A specially equipped plane carrying Ashoka Mukpo, an American journalist who contracted Ebola while covering the outbreak in Liberia, landed at Eppley airfield in Omaha. Mukpo was then taken by ambulance to the Nebraska Medical Center, where he will be treated in a biomedical isolation unit – the largest in the country.
Mukpo was working in Liberia as a freelance cameraman for NBC News when he became ill last week. Mukpo was working in Liberia as a freelance cameraman for NBC News when he tested positive for Ebola last week. As a precautionary measure, the NBC news crew he was working with will remain in isolation for 21 days, the incubation period for the disease. The quarantined team includes NBC News chief medical editor Dr Nancy Snyderman.
He is the fifth American to return to the United States for treatment since the start of the latest Ebola outbreak, which the World Health Organization estimates has killed more than 3,400 people. Meanwhile, a Liberian man with Ebola who started showing symptoms while visiting the US is in critical condition at a Dallas hospital. Meanwhile in Dallas, Thomas Eric Duncan’s condition worsened over the weekend, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Thomas Frieden.
The Nebraska hospital’s biocontainment unit was created in 2005 specifically to handle this kind of illness, Dr Phil Smith, who oversees the unit, said in a news release on Friday. Duncan, from Liberia, is in isolation at Texas Health Presbyterian hospital in Dallas, which announced on Saturday that his condition had changed from serious to critical. He was diagnosed last Tuesday and placed immediately in isolation. However, days prior, he went to the hospital complaining of symptoms similar to Ebola, and told the on-duty nurse that he had traveled from Liberia. This information was not relayed to the prescribing doctor, who sent the man home with a course of antibiotics.
“We are ready, willing and able to care for this patient,” Smith said. “We consider it our duty to give these American citizens the best possible care we can.” The misstep taken by the hospital prompted the CDC to update its guidelines for hospitals receiving patients who are displaying symptoms of Ebola, which can include high fever, diarrhea, vomiting and bleeding.
Mukpo’s father, Dr Mitchell Levy, told NBC Sunday that his son was “counting the minutes” until he could leave Liberia, but that he was not feeling that ill Sunday. Levy said the family was travelling from Rhode Island to Nebraska. Health officials in Dallas are currently monitoring 50 people whom they believe may have come into contact with Duncan before he was isolated, the majority of whom are of very low concern. Nine people are considered “high risk”, among them his girlfriend and her family who lived in the apartment where he stayed. The family was moved to a donated residence over the weekend where they will remain under quarantine for the duration of the 21-day incubation period. None of the 50 individuals under observation have displayed any symptoms.
Doctors at the isolation unit – the largest of four nationwide – will evaluate Mukpo before determining how to treat him. They said they will apply the lessons learned while treating American aid worker Rick Sacra in September. Sacra was successfully treated in the Nebraska unit and was allowed to return to his home in Massachusetts after three weeks, on 25 September. So far, five Americans diagnosed with Ebola in west Africa have been repatriated for treatment including three missionaries, a World Health Organization doctor and, most recently, the NBC News freelance cameraman. The three missionaries have recovered, and the WHO doctor is still being cared for at a US National Institutes of Health facility in Maryland.
Sacra received an experimental Tekmira Pharmaceuticals drug called TKM-Ebola, as well as two blood transfusions from another American aid worker who recovered from Ebola at an Atlanta hospital. The transfusions are believed to help a patient fight off the virus because the survivor’s blood carries antibodies for the disease. Sacra also received supportive care, including IV fluids and aggressive electrolyte management. Mukpo will be treated at the same hospital as Dr Rick Sacra, 51, a Boston obstetrician and Ebola survivor who contracted the disease while treating patients as a medical missionary at a hospital in Liberia. At the hospital, Sacra was treated with an experimental drug called TKM-Ebola, which is made by Tekmira Pharmaceuticals Corp. He also received a “convalescent serum” made of the antibodies taken from the blood of fellow missionary Dr Kent Brantly, the first-ever Ebola patient treated in the US.
In Dallas, another man who recently traveled to the US from Liberia was listed in critical condition on Sunday. Thomas Eric Duncan has been hospitalized at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital since 28 September. Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said he was aware that Duncan’s health had “taken a turn for the worse”, but he declined to describe Duncan’s condition further. When a patient recovers from Ebola, that person develops antibodies that last for at 10 years, according to the CDC. It’s not yet known if those who recover develop a lifetime immunity from the disease or if it’s possible for them to become infected with a different strain of Ebola. Some health officials believe the blood of survivors may help Ebola stricken patients fight the disease.
The virus that causes Ebola is not airborne and can only be spread through direct contact with the bodily fluids – blood, sweat, vomit, feces, urine, saliva or semen – of an infected person who is showing symptoms. Brantly and Nancy Writebol, who worked for the same aid group in Liberia, were treated together at Emory University hospital in Atlanta where they received doses of the untested, experimental drug ZMapp, which has since been depleted.
Duncan arrived in Dallas on 20 September and fell ill a few days later. Officials say 10 people definitely had close contact with Duncan and a further 38 may have been around him when he was showing symptoms of the disease. Drug makers and pharmaceutical companies are doing their best to ramp up production of these drugs; and health agencies have pledged to fast-track the testing process. But even so, it could take months before new doses are available for Ebola sufferers. There are also multiple vaccines in trial phases.
Before he was admitted to the hospital, Duncan stayed with Louise Troh, her 13-year-old son and two nephews in their northeast Dallas apartment. The family has been kept in isolation in an undisclosed location since Friday and a hazardous materials crew has twice decontaminated their home. No one in the family has developed Ebola symptoms. “The drug pipeline is going to be slow, I’m afraid,” CDC director Thomas Frieden told NBC’s Meet the Press. “The most promising drug, ZMapp, there’s no more of it, and it’s hard to make, it takes months to make just a bit.”
On Sunday, Troh told the Associated Press that she was afraid the crew might damage or destroy some irreplaceable keepsakes that she was forced to leave at the apartment, including photographs and recordings of her daughter, a singer, who died in childbirth.
“If they throw out her picture, her recordings, I’ll be hurt. Her live CD’s in there. That’s all I have to show her children in the future. I don’t want to miss it,” she said in a phone interview.