Sunday Times 2
Ebola strikes fourth American in Liberia
View(s):MONROVIA, Oct 4 (AFP) -A US television network prepared to evacuate a cameraman who contracted Ebola in Liberia, as the UN’s pointman flew to Sierra Leone, calling the epidemic the world’s “highest priority”.
Ashoka Mukpo, 33, who was working as a freelancer for NBC news, discovered he was running a fever on Wednesday, his network said, and is in quarantine in a Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) treatment centre.
Hired by NBC only three days ago, he is the fourth American to contract Ebola in Liberia.
“The doctors are optimistic about his prognosis,” Mukpo’s father Mitchell Levy said in a message to family and friends quoted by NBC, adding that his son had worked on humanitarian projects in Liberia for several years.
By far the most deadly epidemic of Ebola on record has spread into five west African countries since the start of the year, infecting more than 7,000 people and killing about half of them.