NIH To Admit, Treat Another Ebola Patient Friday

BETHESDA, Md. (WJZ) -- Just when it seemed like the Ebola crisis was subsiding, an American aid worker infected in Africa is on the way to a Maryland hospital.

The patient is now in a chartered plane bound for the National Institutes of Health.

Christie Ileto has more on the case.

We don't know much about the patient, only that they were volunteering in an Ebola treatment unit in Sierra Leone.

Ebola's latest American victim will soon be housed in the special clinical studies unit at NIH. Rooms with high level isolation, staffed by infectious disease specialists.

Dallas nurse Nina Pham was the first to be flown to the facility last October.

West Africa remains a hot spot for Ebola, where the latest numbers show more than 24,000 people have been infected--10,000 killed. Eight-hundred of the infected are health care workers.

Last Novemeber, Maryland surgeon Dr. Martin Salia died after contracting the disease in Sierra Leone.

Maryland doctors have been prepping since the outbreak began last year. Of the three dozen Ebola-ready treatment centers across the country, three of them are right here in our state.

Months of intense training to treat infected patients as a second line of defense.

"For all I know, I will never see these people again," said Bobby Gborgar Joe.

Baltimore resident Bobby Joe knows firsthand what it's like to lose someone to Ebola. He's lost 16 family members in Liberia.

This latest case only proves what he suspected all along.

Ileto: "Not surprised at all?"

Joe: "No. I'm not surprised. We knew that Sierra Leone was still simmering and people were still getting infected in Sierra Leone. And because of the close proximity, we knew that sooner or later somebody was going to show up."

The latest patient is now en route to Maryland.

This will be the second person admitted to NIH to be treated for Ebola.

So far, of the ten people treated for Ebola in the U.S., eight have survived.