An American healthcare worker who contracted Ebola while volunteering in Sierra Leone will be transported to the United States for treatment at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center Special Clinical Studies Unit in Bethesda, Md.
NIH Clinical Center's SCSU is designed with high-level isolation capabilities and has a staff of infectious disease and critical care specialists. The hospital is one of the nation's 55 recognized as an Ebola treatment center by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
According to NIH, the organization is taking "every precaution to ensure the safety of [its] patients, NIH staff and the public." The patient is expected to arrive Friday via chartered aircraft.
This will be the second American that NIH Clinical Center has treated for Ebola — Nina Pham, a nurse from Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas who contracted Ebola there, was successfully treated at NIH Clinical Center.
The World Health Organization and the CDC recently announced that the death toll for the Ebola outbreak in West Africa surpassed 10,000 lives. Sierra Leone has seen 11,677 total cases, 3,655 of whom have died.