US doctor with Ebola got blood from recovered medic

An American doctor being treated for Ebola in Nebraska was given a blood transfusion from another American doctor who recovered from the virus, hospital officials said.

Rick Sacra, 51, a Christian missionary doctor, was infected with Ebola while working as an obstetrician in Liberia, and was flown to the United States for treatment last week.

He has been given plasma from Kent Brantly, 33, another US doctor who was infected over the summer with Ebola while treating patients in the Liberian capital, Monrovia.

Brantly recovered after being cared for in an Atlanta hospital.

Sacra has been upgraded from serious to good condition, after a week of hospital care, plasma and an experimental treatment doctors declined to name.

Phil Smith, director of the Nebraska Medical Center biocontainment unit, said it is unclear which treatment has helped Sacra improve.

“We decided we were more interested in saving Rick than trying to do a pure study so we just administered everything we had access to, basically,” Smith told reporters on Thursday.

When Brantly was sickened with Ebola in Monrovia, he also received blood from a child who had recovered from the hemorrhagic virus.

Last week, global health experts in Geneva agreed that blood therapies and convalescent serums can be used to fight Ebola immediately, while safety trials begin for potential vaccines.

“There was consensus,” Marie-Paule Kieny, assistant Director-General of the WHO told reporters on September 5 following a two-day meeting of some 200 health experts in Geneva.

“A blood-derived product can be used now.”

Experts think the presence of Ebola antibodies in the blood of recovered patients may help others fight the disease.

The largest-ever outbreak of Ebola fever has now killed more than 2,400 people and infected nearly 5,000 in West Africa, the UN health agency said on Friday.

“In the three hardest-hit countries (Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea), the number is moving faster than the capacity to manage them,” head of the World Health Organization, Margaret Chan told a news conference in Geneva.