- A U.S. healthcare worker who contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone, West Africa was downgraded from serious to critical condition on Monday at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in Bethesda, Md.
The unidentified patient was volunteering for the international relief agency, Partners In Health, when they tested positive for the virus on March 11, the agency confirmed.
The patient was evacuated to the NIH facility on March 13 and had been listed in serious condition.
Ten other clinicians for the Boston-based organization who aided their ailing colleague were also evacuated to the U.S. out of concern they could also contract the disease, the agency reported.
Although they are asymptomatic, each one is in isolation for 21 days near Ebola treatment facilities at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Nebraska, Emory University Hospital in Atlanta and the NIH facility in Maryland, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In a statement, Partners in Health said it is following established guidelines to ensure the safety of staff and patients in West Africa.
“However, we are reminded every day that Ebola has been, from the very beginning, a disease of caregivers,” said a recent statement from the organization.
Despite the setbacks, the agency “remains fully committed to the Ebola response in West Africa and, in the months and years to follow, working shoulder-to-shoulder with the governments of Sierra Leone and Liberia toward rebuilding the health systems in both countries.”