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American Who Contracted Ebola Now in Critical Condition

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An American health care worker who contracted Ebola while volunteering in a Sierra Leone treatment unit has been downgraded to critical condition at the National Institutes of Health, doctors said Monday.

The agency said in a statement that the patient’s status was changed from serious condition. He is being treated at the National Institutes of Health’s hospital near Washington.

“We are intensively treating the patient,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at NIH. “He’s in our special clinical studies unit and, hopefully, that will be able to turn this around and the patient will recover, but it’s too early to say.”

The patient was flown in isolation from Sierra Leone on a chartered plane last week and arrived early Friday morning. His name and age have not been released.

The man is a clinician working with Partners in Health, a Boston-based nonprofit organization. The group has been treating patients in Liberia and Sierra Leone since November. (Read more from “American Who Contracted Ebola Now in Critical Condition” HERE)

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U.S.-Built Ebola Treatment Centers in Liberia Nearly Empty as Outbreak Fades

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Near the hillside shelter where dozens of men and women died of Ebola, a row of green U.S. military tents sit atop a vast expanse of imported gravel. The generators hum; chlorinated water churns in brand-new containers; surveillance cameras send a live feed to a large-screen television.

There’s only one thing missing from this state-of-the-art Ebola treatment center: Ebola patients.

The U.S. military sent about 3,000 troops to West Africa to build centers like this one in recent months. They were intended as a crucial safeguard against an epidemic that flared in unpredictable, deadly waves. But as the outbreak fades in Liberia, it has become clear that the disease had already drastically subsided before the first American centers were completed. Several of the U.S.-built units haven’t seen a single patient infected with Ebola.

It now appears that the alarming epidemiological predictions that in large part prompted the U.S. aid effort here were far too bleak. Although future flare-ups of the disease are possible, the near-empty Ebola centers tell the story of an aggressive American military and civilian response that occurred too late to help the bulk of the more than 8,300 Liberians who became infected. Last week, even as international aid organizations built yet more Ebola centers, there was an average of less than one new case reported in Liberia per day.

“If they had been built when we needed them, it wouldn’t have been too much,” said Moses Massaquoi, the Liberian government’s chairman for Ebola case management. “But they were too late.” (Read more about the Ebola treatment centers empty HERE)

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