By Drew Hinshaw, Lukas I. Alpert and Jennifer Levitz
MONROVIA, Liberia-- Ashoka Mukpo, an American freelance
journalist diagnosed with Ebola, and the NBC News team he worked
with here will be flown to the U.S., as the epidemic sweeping West
Africa continues to have international repercussions.
Mr. Mukpo is scheduled to be picked up Sunday night in Liberia
and will be transported to the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha,
his father, Mitchell Levy, said Friday.
His son is the fifth American--and the first journalist--known
to have contracted Ebola while working in West Africa. Aid workers
have also been flown back to the U.S. to undergo treatment. A
Ugandan doctor working in Sierra Leone and diagnosed with Ebola
arrived in Frankfurt, Germany, Friday, the second known case in
that country of the disease.
Mr. Mukpo's illness comes only days after the U.S. Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention confirmed Thomas Eric Duncan, a
Liberian man visiting Texas, had tested positive for the virus.
Richard Sacra, a Massachusetts doctor evacuated from West Africa
in early September, was treated for Ebola at the Omaha facility and
discharged on Sept. 25.
NBC News, which hired Mr. Mukpo as a cameraman on Tuesday,
reported that it was helping the family to arrange for his
transport home Sunday by air ambulance.
The U.S. State Department was coordinating the flight, said Dr.
Levy, who is director of Rhode Island Hospital's division of
critical care, pulmonary and sleep medicine. He also is a professor
of medicine at Brown University in Providence, R.I. A spokeswoman
at the U.S. Embassy in Monrovia didn't respond to requests for
comment.
Mr. Mukpo, 33 years old, checked into a tent hospital in the
Liberian capital Monrovia Thursday morning and registered a
101-degree fever, he said by telephone from the facility, which is
run by Doctors Without Borders.
Dr. Levy said he has talked to his son several times about his
symptoms and they were still relatively mild on Friday afternoon,
including mostly a fever, muscle aches and fatigue. "I really
believe that before he would start exhibiting more worrisome
symptoms, that he's going to be on a plane back home," he said.
Nancy Snyderman, NBC's chief medical editor who had been working
alongside Mr. Mukpo in Liberia, spoke of his condition on NBC's
"Today" show on Friday. "The amount of virus in his body is low. So
he should have a good prognosis," she said. Dr. Levy and his wife,
Diana Mukpo also appeared on the show Friday.
An NBC spokeswoman said Mr. Mukpo was hired as a freelancer
starting on Tuesday and became sick about a day later. Dr.
Snyderman said that once he realized he had a fever and was feeling
achy, he self-quarantined overnight and then went to be tested.
She and the rest of the news crew shared a workspace, vehicle
and equipment with Mr. Mukpo, but, fearful of Ebola, they were all
already being extremely careful not to shake hands or otherwise
touch one another.
"So I do believe our team, while we are being hypervigilant, we
are very, very, very low risk of becoming ill," she said.
NBC said it planned to fly the news team back to the U.S. on a
private plane and quarantine them for 21 days.
Mr. Mukpo will be taken to the Nebraska Medical Center's
Biocontainment Unit for treatment immediately after arrival early
Monday morning, the hospital said in a statement on Friday. Dr.
Sacra received nearly three weeks of treatment at the center.
"The experience we have in treating Dr. Sacra should prove to be
very valuable in treating this patient," said Angela Hewlett, M.D.,
associate medical director of the Biocontainment Unit. "We learned
a lot about treatment methods the first time around and have been
able to refine our operation processes in several ways." The
hospital said that in one major change, it created a lab inside the
unit so tests don't have to performed elsewhere.
Mr. Mukpo said he wasn't sure how he contracted the virus. In
the past week, while on assignment for documentary news channel
Vice News, he said he was lightly splashed in the face by a liquid
he couldn't identify as he helped a taxi driver spray disinfectant
on a car that had carried an Ebola patient.
He also stood near a group of sick people trying to secure a bed
in the Ebola ward of Monrovia's Island Clinic, which is run by the
World Health Organization. The facility is overwhelmed, having
taken in far more Ebola patients than its 160 beds can accommodate.
More people arrive each day, staff say.
As the number of Ebola cases has climbed in the Liberian
capital, it has become difficult for foreign journalists, as well
as ordinary people, to avoid infectious individuals.
Ebola has killed more than 3,300 West Africans, an official
tally that the WHO says "vastly" underestimates the real number.
Clinics are full to overflowing and ambulances are overtaxed. Body
disposal teams in the streets of Monrovia are now a common
sight.
Mr. Mukpo worked for the Sustainable Development Institute, an
advocacy group based in Monrovia, from September 2012 to this past
May, and at the same time worked as a freelance journalist in the
country, Dr. Levy said.
More recently he had been freelancing for NBC News and Vice News
and has filed video to CBS and the Washington Post while covering
the epidemic.
Vice News said Mr. Mukpo had worked for it on four projects as a
locally hired assistant to staff teams starting in August. The
Washington Post confirmed that it had purchased raw footage from
Mr. Mukpo on Sept. 22 of the chaotic scene outside a Monrovia
hospital. CBS News said it had bought video last month from Mr.
Mukpo that he had previously shot for a documentary, but said he
had never worked for the network.
Glenna Gordon contributed to this article.
Write to Drew Hinshaw at drew.hinshaw@wsj.com and Jennifer
Levitz at jennifer.levitz@wsj.com
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