A surgeon who contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone and was evacuated to America for treatment has died in the biocontainment unit of a hospital in Omaha, Nebraska.  The death of Doctor Martin Salia points to the importance of identifying and treating Ebola symptoms as early as possible.

“It is with an extremely heavy heart that we share this news,” said Dr. Philip Smith, the medical director of the biocontainment unit at the Nebraska Medical Center.  “Dr. Salia was extremely critical when he arrived here, and unfortunately, despite our best efforts, we weren’t able to save him.”

Smith said the Dr. Salia’s symptoms were already in the advanced stage:  He suffered respiratory and kidney failure, and therefore required ventilation and dialysis.  Salia was also treated with a blood plasma transfusion from a patient who has recovered from Ebola and an experimental drug, ZMapp.  But when he arrived in Omaha from Sierra Leone on Saturday, several noted that he needed to be transported on a gurney, and did not walked under his own power as earlier survivors of Ebola had done – a sign that his symptoms had progressed.

Salia was a citizen of Sierra Leone, but a resident of Maryland near the American capital Washington, DC.  He was a surgeon at Sierra Leone’s Kissy United Methodist Hospital in Freetown, and it is unclear how he contracted the Ebola virus.  Sierra Leone's fragile healthcare system has now seen five doctors die in the West African Ebola Epidemic, which has killed more than 5,100 people overall.  Salia is now the second person to have died of Ebola in the United States, the first being Liberian Thomas Eric Duncan who died after a hospital in Dallas initially screwed up his case and misdiagnosed his symptoms.  Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital quickly settled with Duncan’s family for what has been reputed to be a seven-figure cheque.