(Reuters) – A doctor from Massachusetts who came down with Ebola while volunteering in Liberia will return to West Africa in January to resume medical work, the missionary group he works with said on Wednesday.
Rick Sacra, 52, recovered from Ebola under treatment in September at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. He was one of three American health workers for Christian missionary groups who came down with Ebola in Liberia and were flown to the United States for treatment.
Sacra will go back to Liberia for about a month and will treat patients with problems other than Ebola, freeing up other health workers to focus on Ebola, the SIM missionary group said in a statement.
Ebola, a hemorrhagic fever, has killed more than 6,000 people out of more than 17,000 cases in an outbreak that began in March, according to the United Nations’ World Health Organization. Almost all of the cases have been in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
(Reporting by Fiona Ortiz in Chicago)