A Sierra Leone surgeon with Ebola being flown to the US for treatment is critically ill, possibly sicker than other patients treated in the US, the Nebraska Medical Centre said yesterday.

Dr Martin Salia, 44, a permanent US resident who caught Ebola working as a surgeon in a Freetown hospital, was stable enough to take a flight from West Africa to the US and was expected to arrive in Nebraska at midnight yesterday, the hospital said in a statement.

“Although the patient’s exact condition won’t be available until doctors here evaluate him after he arrives, information coming from the team caring for him in Sierra Leone indicates he is critically ill - possibly sicker than the first patients successfully treated in the United States,” the hospital in Omaha, Nebraska, said in a statement.

Salia will be the third patient treated for Ebola in the Nebraska hospital’s Biocontainment Unit since the outbreak gained momentum this year in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.

Salia was chief medical officer at the United Methodist Church’s Kissy Hospital when he was confirmed on Tuesday to have contracted Ebola.

His evacuation was at the request of his wife, a US citizen who lives in Maryland and who has agreed to reimburse the US government for any expense, the US State Department said in a statement.