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U.S. Ebola patient headed to NIH

The National Institutes of Health said Thursday that it plans to admit to its Maryland hospital an American health care worker with Ebola.
By Dana Ford

(CNN) — The National Institutes of Health said Thursday that it plans to admit to its Maryland hospital an American health care worker with Ebola.

The person was volunteering at an Ebola treatment center in Sierra Leone, and will be flown back to the United States on a chartered aircraft and admitted Friday, the NIH said.

No other details were immediately available.

The patient will be the second with Ebola admitted to the NIH hospital. Nina Pham, a nurse at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, was admitted to NIH in October after she contracted the disease while treating Liberian national Thomas Eric Duncan. Pham recovered and was released free of disease. Duncan died.

NIH is one of only four hospitals in the United States that have biocontainment units and has been practicing for years to treat a highly infectious disease such as Ebola.

More than 10,000 people have died in the Ebola outbreak, according to the latest figures from the World Health Organization, mostly in the countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Ebola is spread by direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person.

CNN’s Athena Jones contributed to this report.

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