A US medical missionary infected with the Ebola virus entered the Nebraska Medical Centre in Omaha for treatment yesterday morning after being flown in from West Africa, a spokeswoman for the medical centre said.

Dr Rick Sacra, a 51-year-old Boston physician, is the third US missionary doing health work with the SIM USA Christian group in Liberia infected with the deadly virus.

Sacra’s plane landed at the Offutt Air Force Base and he was transported to the medical centre in an ambulance escorted by state highway patrol, said Jenny Nowatzke, media relations coordinator with the medical centre.

Sacra walked onto the airplane in Liberia on Thursday. He will be treated at the Nebraska hospital’s Biocontainment Patient Care Unit.

Boston physician is third US missionary in Liberia infected with deadly virus

The virus has killed 1,900 people out of 3,500 cases in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Nigeria and Senegal since March, in the worst outbreak since Ebola was first uncovered in 1976. Two other SIM USA missionaries infected with ebola, Nancy Writebol and Kent Brantly, were also flown back to the US for treatment.

The Nebraska facility where Sacra is being treated is similar to the one at Emory University in Atlanta where Writebol and Brantly were treated and recovered.

Writebol and Brantly received an experimental treatment, ZMapp, that has been available for only a few patients.

However, there are no more doses of the experimental drug – made by Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc – for Sacra, the director of the biocontainment unit in Omaha has told reporters .