OMAHA, Neb. (AP) – An American video journalist who recovered from Ebola at an Omaha hospital left the facility Wednesday afternoon and is heading home to Rhode Island, a hospital spokesman said.
Ashoka Mukpo, who contracted the virus while working in Liberia as a freelance cameraman for NBC and other media outlets, was released from the Nebraska Medical Center’s biocontainment unit around 9 a.m. He spent several hours meeting with staff members who treated him and left the hospital complex in the afternoon, spokesman Taylor Wilson said.
Wilson told The Associated Press that Mukpo, 33, would fly to Rhode Island on Wednesday evening but he was unable to provide details about those travel plans.
Hospital officials said Tuesday that Mukpo’s blood had tested negative for the Ebola virus.
Dr. Jeffrey Gold, the University of Nebraska Medical Center chancellor, read a statement earlier Wednesday in which Mukpo expressed his thanks to the Nebraska hospital medical staff.