A doctor who has played a key role in
fighting the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone is
infected with the disease, according to that
country's Ministry of Health.
Dr. Sheik Humarr Khan is being treated by the
French aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres --
also known as Doctors Without Borders -- in
Kailahun, Sierra Leone, Tim Shenk, an agency
spokesman, told CNN.
Until falling ill, Khan had been overseeing Ebola
treatment and isolation units at Kenema
Government Hospital, about 185 miles east of the
capital Freetown.
Citing patient confidentiality, Shenk
declined to provide additional details
about Khan's condition.
The Ministry of Health took to
Facebook to deny reports the doctor
had died.
The ministry "wishes the general
public and all partners working in the
healthcare sector to know that . ...
Khan is still alive and responding to
treatment contrary to social media
report of his demise," according to a
Facebook post.
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Sierra Leone has had 427 confirmed
cases of Ebola and 144 deaths,
according to figures released
Wednesday by the health ministry.
That puts it, along with Guinea, at the
center of an outbreak of the virus that has
steadily spread through western Africa since it
began earlier this year. More than 1,000 people
have contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone, Guinea
and Liberia, according to the World Health
Organization.
Ebola typically kills 90% of those infected, but the
death rate in this outbreak has dropped to roughly
60% thanks to early treatment.
What is Ebola, and why does it kill?
Officials believe that the Ebola
outbreak has taken such a strong hold
in West Africa due to the proximity of
the jungle -- where the virus
originated -- to Conakry, which has a
population of 2 million. Since
symptoms don't immediately appear,
the virus can easily spread as people
travel around the region. Once the
virus takes hold, many die in an
average of 10 days as the blood fails
to clot and hemorrhaging occurs.
The disease isn't contagious until
symptoms appear. Symptoms include
fever, headache and fatigue. At that
point, the Ebola virus is spread via bodily fluids.
Get the fast facts on Ebola
Health workers are at especially high risk, since
they are in close contact with infected people and
their bodily fluids. Adding to the danger, in the
initial stages of infection doctors may mistake an
Ebola infection for another, milder illness.
Aside from his work on Ebola, Khan also serves
as the lead physician of the hospital's Lassa
Fever Program, another fearsome tropical disease.
The hospital's official biography page states Khan
took on that job when his predecessor died of
Lassa Fever.
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