ATLANTA – A medical plane transporting the fourth American aid worker sickened with the Ebola virus landed in metro Atlanta on Tuesday morning, with the patient headed to Emory University Hospital, where two others have been successfully treated.

The plane touched down around 9:20 a.m. at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta, just northwest of Atlanta. Air Force spokesman Lt. Col. James Wilson confirmed the arrival.

The patient will be housed in a special isolation unit, hospital officials said. The patient’s identity was not released, and the hospital released no additional details.

But the World Health Organization says a doctor who has been working in an Ebola treatment center in Sierra Leone has tested positive for the disease. It said the doctor was in stable condition Monday in Freetown and was being evacuated.

Last month, two U.S. aid workers who contracted Ebola in Liberia, Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, were treated successfully at Emory.

Another worker, Dr. Rick Sacra, 51, is being treated at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. In Omaha, Sacra’s family members said he was able to eat breakfast Monday for the first time since arriving Friday at the Nebraska hospital.

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The doctor from Worcester, Massachusetts, remains in stable condition. His wife, Debbie, said that Sacra is more alert and that they had a half-hour conversation by video conference Sunday.

“He hasn’t been able to eat much since he got here, but he had some toast and applesauce,” Debbie Sacra said. “He also tolerated the research drug well – better than he had the previous doses he was given.”

Sacra is being treated with an experimental drug that is different than Zmapp, the one given to Brantly and Writebol. Sacra’s doctors have refused to name the drug they are using, but they say they’ve been consulting with experts on Ebola on his treatment. Zmapp also is experimental, and doctors and experts have said it’s impossible to know whether the drug helped their recovery.

Sacra went to Omaha instead of Atlanta because federal officials asked the medical center to treat him in order to prepare other isolation units to take more Ebola patients if needed.

The Ebola outbreak sweeping West Africa has killed more than 2,000 people and has taken a particularly high toll on health care workers.


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