With 2nd Ebola Patient's Release, Defense Chief Hagel, HHS Ask Nebraska Med Center To Share What It Has Learned

Now that the Nebraska Medical Center’s biocontainment unit has released a second Ebola-free patient, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and other federal officials want unit staffers to share what they have learned.  Ashoka Mukpo, the second American Ebola patient to be sent to the unit, left the hospital Wednesday after a little more than 16 days of treatment. Mukpo issued a statement full of thanks for the care he was given but with a heavy heart over receiving something that is denied many in West Africa.

“Today is a joyful day for my family and I,” Mukpo wrote. At the same time, he said he is “aware of the global inequalities that allowed me to be flown to an American hospital when so many Liberians die alone with minimal care.”

Both Mukpo, a 33-year-old freelance journalist, and Dr. Rick Sacra, a 52-year-old medical missionary treated in Omaha last month, contracted the Ebola virus while working in Monrovia, Liberia. Caring for the two of them has helped Nebraska Med Center officials refine protocols for treating Ebola patients, processing their lab samples and protecting the workers who care for them...