The third American medical missionary worker infected with the Ebola virus while working in West Africa arrived Friday at a Nebraska hospital for treatment. For more please visit: http://www.parrishmed.com/

1. Third U.S. Aid Worker Infected With Ebola Arrives in Nebraska
By Steven Reinberg HealthDay Reporter
FRIDAY, Sept. 5, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- The third American medical
missionary worker infected with the Ebola virus while working in West
Africa arrived Friday at a Nebraska hospital for treatment.
Dr. Rick Sacra is sick but in stable condition and communicating with his
caregivers. He is being treated at the Nebraska Medical Center's 10-bed
special isolation unit in Omaha -- the largest of four such units in the United
States, the Associated Press reported.
His doctors said Sacra poses no health risk to the public because Ebola is only
transmitted through close contact with an infected person.
The 51-year-old Sacra is a family doctor who trained and worked in
Worcester, Mass., but spent most of the past 20 years in Liberia. He was not treating Ebola patients but working in an obstetrics
ward at a hospital in Liberia when he became ill, the Boston Globe reported.
Two other American medical missionaries, Dr. Kent Brantly, 33, and Nancy Writebol, 59, became infected with the Ebola virus
while working with Ebola patients in Liberia. Both were flown back to the United States last month for aggressive treatment at
Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, recovered, and are no longer contagious.
U.S. and World Health Organization officials warned earlier this week that the highly virulent disease is spreading faster than
health workers in Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone can work to contain it. WHO officials said the outbreak has killed
more than 1,900 people and 20,000 people could become infected with the virus, which has a mortality rate that can approach
90 percent.
Earlier this week, two women became the first Americans to be given an experimental Ebola vaccine as the U.S. National
Institutes of Health launched a much-anticipated trial to combat the virus. The vaccine had previously been tested only in
monkeys.
The fast-tracked clinical trial will test the safety of the vaccine and will include 20 men and women ages 18 to 50. No one will
be infected with the disease. The vaccine was developed by the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
(NIAID) and drug maker GlaxoSmithKline.
"There is an urgent need for a protective Ebola vaccine, and it is important to establish that a vaccine is safe and spurs the
immune system to react in a way necessary to protect against infection," NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci said in a statement.
In a related development, drug maker Johnson & Johnson said Thursday that it will seek to "fast-track" the development of what
it called a promising new combination vaccine against Ebola. The start of the trial is scheduled for early 2015.
Also Thursday, the U.S. government pledged $75 million to pay for 1,000 more beds in Ebola treatment centers in Liberia -- the
hardest hit nation in West Africa -- and to buy 130,000 protective suits for health care workers. In many cases, nurses in Liberia
are reduced to wearing rags over their heads to protect themselves from the disease. Lack of protective equipment is to blame
for the high death rate among health care workers in the stricken region, where it's estimated that health workers account for
about 10 percent of deaths so far, the AP reported.
The big challenge right now is that the affected countries don't have the resources they need. Hospitals don't have enough beds,
and there aren't enough ambulances, Keiji Fukuda, the World Health Organization's assistant director-general for health

2. security, said at a news briefing this week, USA Today reported.
Fukuda said basic needs aren't being met in the hardest hit countries. "Bodies are not being taken away quickly enough," he
said. "People are hungry in these communities. They don't know how they are going to get food."
Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Ebola is primarily being spread in West
Africa in two ways. The first way is among people caring for people with the disease, whether at home or in health-care settings
and hospitals. The second way: unsafe burial practices.
More information
For more on Ebola, visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
SOURCES: Sept. 4, 2014, news release, Johnson & Johnson; Sept. 3, 2014, news briefing, World Health Organization; Sept. 2, 2014, news conference
with Thomas Frieden, M.D., M.P.H., director, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; <i>Associated Press</i>; <i>Boston Globe</i>; <i>USA
Today</i>
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