A doctor who contracted Ebola while treating patients in Sierra Leone and was evacuated to the U.S. for care in September revealed his identity in a report published Sunday.
Ian Crozier, who had been working with the World Health Organization in Kenema, told the New York Times that he explicitly kept his identity a secret to protect his family. Crozier, 44, is now recovering in Phoenix and working through a physical-therapy program.
One specialist admitted in the report that Crozier was the “sickest” patient that Emory University Hospital in Atlanta has seen thus far. He weighed 220 lb. pre-Ebola, but lost 30. The viral load in his blood was 100 times that of the facility’s other patients; he spent 12 days on a ventilator and was on dialysis for 24 days.
Crozier went public, he said, to thank Emory and bring awareness to the epidemic. At least 17,145 cases of Ebola have been reported in the outbreak, including 6,070 deaths.
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