--- title: Ebola: New Mexico Woman Tested After Visit to Sierra Leone description: Woman shows early symptoms of viral disease, but health officials say she's unlikely to be infected canonical: https://time.com/3134627/new-mexico-tested-ebola-sierra-leone/ author: Per Liljas article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-08-18T08:50:34.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:00:53.076Z article:section: Health og:title: New Mexico woman tested for Ebola og:description: She shows early symptoms of viral disease, but officials say she's unlikely to be infected og:url: https://time.com/3134627/new-mexico-tested-ebola-sierra-leone/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta643fa7f12cdff01/69869fda169ab0a11827ac27/158929697.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 4800 og:image:height: 2700 og:image:alt: 158929697 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: New Mexico woman tested for Ebola twitter:description: She shows early symptoms of viral disease, but officials say she's unlikely to be infected twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta643fa7f12cdff01/69869fda169ab0a11827ac27/158929697.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # A New Mexico Woman Is Being Tested for Ebola After a Visit to Sierra Leone > Sponsored content. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's weekday health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free weekday newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=0908d027-d583-4482-a769-0fb5b3c9105b&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola [Watch (HLS stream): Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/G194AmTC.m3u8) (2:32)  _Published 2014-08-13. Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola_ by [Per Liljas](https://time.com/author/per-liljas/) ## Per Liljas Aug 18, 2014 8:50 AM UTC  Transmission electron micrograph of Ebola virus Transmission electron micrograph of Ebola virus Kallista Images—Getty Images/Kallista Images by [Per Liljas](https://time.com/author/per-liljas/) ## Per Liljas Aug 18, 2014 8:50 AM UTC A New Mexico woman is being [tested](http://www.abqjournal.com/447619/abqnewsseeker/health-department-cdc-testing-new-mexico-woman-for-ebola.html) for Ebola, even though the state department of health says it is improbable that she’s carrying the virus. The 30-year-old returned from a teacher assignment in Sierra Leone with fever, muscle aches, headache and a sore throat — all symptoms similar to the early stages of Ebola, the Albuquerque _Journal_ reports. However, she had no known exposure to the contagious disease, which is spread through contact with body fluids. Health officials say the woman is being tested “out of an abundance of caution.” Preliminary test results are expected later this week. In the past five months, the deadliest Ebola outbreak ever has claimed over a thousand lives in West Africa. \[[_Albuquerque Journal_](http://www.abqjournal.com/447619/abqnewsseeker/health-department-cdc-testing-new-mexico-woman-for-ebola.html)\] ## Transcript This Ebola outbreak is unprecedented. This is definitely a marathon and not a sprint. The bugs have evolved. The outbreak has gotten bigger. We are only as strong as the weakest link, and we have learned from Ebola that West Africa was a very weak link. [ MUSIC ] There's small clinics, these are like one room places where sick people might go in their house with maybe an auxiliary nurse as some one who has a little bit of medical training, but defiantly not the same standards that we would have here in the US. We're facing 3 main threats. The first is the threat of new organisms. It was coming and spreading in different places. The second is drug- resistant bacteria, and the third are intentionally created organisms. What we do in an outbreak response is continuously see how can we make it better. The exercises we've gone through both, re- evaluating our own protocols but also understanding what the public and governmental responses are has really helped us understand. How to take care of these patients in the larger context of our healthcare systems. And, those who are in the building, I would urge you to come down to either the ops team room, or the, When designing a unit that is designed to accept patients with serious communicable diseases, like Ebola, there are ways to design a unit so that it's function. Functional. Any hospital that can isolate a patient in a single patient room with a bathroom and can follow our infection control recommendations is capable of safely caring for a patient with Ebola. And we've tried to encourage every single hospital in the country to have an antibiotic stewardship program to improve antibiotic prescribing practices. There is a concern about fatigue as we go on that, the CDC other groups have sort of ramping up now to try to surge resources into the area. What we're also realizing is, we need to be able to maintain that surge for many months to keep the pressure on to completely control the outbreak. Time will tell in the next few weeks if we can start to see those numbers going in the right direction. Fewer new cases each day or each week. The single most important thing to understand about protecting Americans from Ebola is that can best be done by stopping it at the source in Africa. Its normal to be scared of something as deadly as Ebola and for the general public I really hope we can never let our fear undermine our compassion. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3134627/new-mexico-tested-ebola-sierra-leone/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3134627/new-mexico-tested-ebola-sierra-leone/"},"headline":"A New Mexico Woman Is Being Tested for Ebola After a Visit to Sierra Leone","datePublished":"2014-08-18T08:50:34.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T08:00:53.076Z","description":"Health officials say she's unlikely to be infected, however","url":"https://time.com/3134627/new-mexico-tested-ebola-sierra-leone/","keywords":["Infectious Disease","ebola"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta643fa7f12cdff01/69869fda169ab0a11827ac27/158929697.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Per Liljas","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/per-liljas/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta643fa7f12cdff01/69869fda169ab0a11827ac27/158929697.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"158929697","caption":"158929697","creditText":"Kallista Images—Getty Images/Kallista Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/infectious-disease/","name":"Infectious Disease"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3134627/new-mexico-tested-ebola-sierra-leone/","name":"A New Mexico Woman Is Being Tested for Ebola After a Visit to Sierra Leone"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola","description":"Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/G194AmTC/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2014-08-13T23:41:12.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/G194AmTC.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/3134627/new-mexico-tested-ebola-sierra-leone/","duration":"PT2M32S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/3134627/new-mexico-tested-ebola-sierra-leone/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```