An ambulance transports Ashoka Mukpo, who contracted Ebola while working in Liberia, to the Nebraska Medical Center's specialized isolation unit Monday, Oct. 6, 2014, in Omaha, Neb., where he will be treated for the deadly disease. (AP Photo/Dave Weaver)
The American journalist being treated in Nebraska for Ebola will receive a blood transfusion from a fellow Ebola survivor.
Ashoka Mukpo, 33, who was working in Liberia as a freelance photographer for NBC News, is scheduled to receive a blood transfusion Wednesday from Dr. Kent Brantly.
Brantly, who contracted Ebola while working with Samaritan’s Purse in Liberia, had previously donated blood to Dr. Richard Sacra, a Massachusetts doctor who has since recovered from the virus.
Mukpo is being treated at the Nebraska Medical Center in a biocontainment unit, the same isolation center where Sacra was treated.
The hospital contacted Brantly on October 7, as he was driving through Kansas City, Mo. He then stopped to donate his blood, which was then flown to Omaha to be given to Mukpo.
“It’s not a likely scenario that he would again have the same blood type,” Dr. Angela Hewlett, associated medical director of the Biocontainment Unit at the Nebraska Medical Center, said in a news release.
“We are incredibly grateful that Dr. Brantly would take the time to do this, not once, but twice.”
In addition to a blood transfusion from Brantly, Sacra received the experimental drug TKM Ebola and other supportive care. It’s not known which part of the treatment — or if all three — ultimately helped Sacra recover.
Mukpo, and a second patient in Dallas, Thomas Eric Duncan, are being treated with brincidofovir, an experimental drug made by biopharmaceutical company Chimerix.
The drug, which comes in tablet form, is currently undergoing additional tests in laboratory animals infected with Ebola. According to a statement from Chimerix, it was approved by the FDA for use in human Ebola patients on Monday.
Chimerix faced a firestorm of criticism this year when it initially declined to provide the drug on a "compassionate use" basis to 8-year-old Joshua Hardy, a Virginia boy who developed a potentially-fatal adenovirus infection after a bone marrow transplant for kidney cancer.
The company relented and enrolled the boy in a clinical trial. He went home from the hospital in July.
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