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Doctor Who Survived Ebola Says He Will Likely Return To Liberia

NECN
/

The Massachusetts doctor who was cured of the deadly Ebola virus talked Friday about his ordeal.

   Dr. Rick Sacra, who was infected while delivering babies at a clinic in Liberia, said it is likely he will return to that country.

   "I think the odds of my ending up back there are pretty high.  I don't have any specific plans, but that is where my heart is," said Sacra.

   Sacra spent much of the last two decades in Liberia, working for a missionary group.  He spent the last three weeks in quarantine at the Nebraska Medical Center where he was treated with an experimental drug. Describing himself as weak and wobbly, he said a full recovery will take months.  At his news conference at the UMass Medical Center, Sacra appealed for prayers and resources for the African countries hit hard by the Ebola outbreak.

Paul Tuthill is WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief. He’s been covering news, everything from politics and government corruption to natural disasters and the arts, in western Massachusetts since 2007. Before joining WAMC, Paul was a reporter and anchor at WRKO in Boston. He was news director for more than a decade at WTAG in Worcester. Paul has won more than two dozen Associated Press Broadcast Awards. He won an Edward R. Murrow award for reporting on veterans’ healthcare for WAMC in 2011. Born and raised in western New York, Paul did his first radio reporting while he was a student at the University of Rochester.