WORCESTER, Mass. (AP) – Dr. Rick Sacra knew what he was getting into when he went to Liberia in early August to treat very ill pregnant women and deliver babies at a time when the West African nation was dealing with an outbreak of Ebola.
But Sacra, who contracted Ebola and was treated successfully in an isolation unit at the Nebraska Medical Center before returning home to Massachusetts, shrugged off any suggestion that he was a hero. He said there are many people, including firefighters, police officers and military personnel, who head toward dangerous situations instead of steering away.
“I don’t think it’s any different from any of them,” he told reporters Friday at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, which he attended.
“I mean, I think we all, too, have that human instinct that says I can’t leave somebody who’s in need, I have to help – and it’s as simple as that,” Sacra said at his second news conference in as many days.
Sacra, 51, is one of three American aid workers successfully treated after contracting the Ebola virus in West Africa. He has spent much of the last 15 years working in Liberia as a missionary doctor. He had been working at a Liberian hospital with the North Carolina-based charity SIM when he contracted Ebola.