This photo taken on August 2, 2012 shows researchers wearing protective gear working in a laboratory of the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Entebbe. AFP PHOTO | ISAAC KASAMANI
WASHINGTON
A US photojournalist who was infected with Ebola in Liberia is now free of the deadly virus and will go HOME on Wednesday, the Nebraska hospital treating him said.
"Recovering from Ebola is a truly humbling feeling," Ashoka Mukpo, who was working as a FREELANCE cameraman for NBC News in Monrovia when he fell ill, said in a hospital statement Tuesday.
"Too many are not as fortunate and lucky as I've been. I'm very happy to be alive," he said.
The virus has killed more than 4,500 people in West Africa this year, and stoked fears that it couldSPREAD beyond the three worst-hit countries Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, and become a global threat.
Eight people including Mukpo have or are being treated for Ebola in the United States, one of whom, a man from Liberia, has died.
Mukpo added in the statement that he was not sure how he contracted the disease.
"I was around a lot of sick people the week before I got sick," he said. "I thought I was keeping a good distance and wish I knew exactly what went wrong."
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention blood TEST showed that Mukpo no longer had the virus in his bloodstream, the Nebraska Medicine statement said.
Mukpo arrived at Nebraska Medical Center on October 6, and was able to walk off the plane that evacuated him from West Africa.