One day after arriving in the U.S., Dr. Rick Sacra, the third American missionary to be infected with the Ebola virus, is in stable condition.
Sacra, 51, arrived early Friday morning at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, where he will be treated at the hospital's isolation unit.
Sacra is a physician who lives in Boston with his wife Debbie and two children. He regularly travels to the West African nation of Liberia, one of the areas hardest hit by the deadly Ebola virus, to work in a missions hospital there.
SIM USA, the missions organization for whom Sacra was working, released a statement Friday saying Sacra sent them the following email:
"To all of you at SIM, and to my colleagues here in Liberia at ELWA Hospital, I apologize. Regarding evacuation: I know and accept that there is no easy solution for an evacuation, so I don´t expect one. Jesus is right here with me in Liberia! And Dr. Brown, our SIM/ELWA medical director, has a lot of experience now. And the ELWA 2 unit has been discharging a lot of alive patients. I know that with or without evacuation, I could well die from this disease. And frankly, my main concerns are for Debbie and my boys, and for the ministry of SIM and how that would affect things. I can only trust that God is at work."
According to the medical director, Dr. Phil Smith, a team of 35 doctors, nurses and related medical professionals on site will be caring for Sacra. Smith went on to say experimental treatments are being considered, including using blood serum from a patient who has recovered from Ebola.
The two other Americans who contracted Ebola, Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, were treated with the experimental drug ZMapp. However, there is reportedly no more ZMapp available, and the manufacturer says it will be months before they can make even a little bit more.
Although both of the other Americans who took ZMapp recovered from Ebola, it's unclear whether their recovery was due to the ZMapp, or simply their own immune system fighting-off the Ebola virus.
The drug was also given to five other Ebola patients, two of whom died.
Although there are about six other Ebola drugs in development, there are currently no licensed drugs for the disease. There is also no Ebola vaccine.
However, just this week, American scientists began an early trial of one vaccine.
So far, Ebola has killed nearly 2,000 people.
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