American Nurse Exposed to Ebola to be Monitored At Maryland Hospital

An American nurse treating Ebola in West Africa will be admitted to a hospital in Maryland today after she was allegedly exposed to the disease.

The nurse, whose name has not been released to the public, will be treated in the "strictly controlled" atmosphere of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland; the aid worker is expected to arrive Thursday afternoon.

The National Institutes of Health [NIH] is one of 35 hospitals in the U.S. approved by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to treat an Ebola-infected patient. A press release from the hospital says its clinical setting is "specifically designed to provide high-level isolation capabilities."

"NIH is taking every precaution to ensure the safety of our patients, NIH staff, and the public. This situation presents minimal risk to any of them," the release adds.

The nurse was reportedly treating patients with Ebola in Sierra Leone when they were potentially exposed to the disease, although they have yet to test positive for the virus.

Another American nurse, Nina Pham, was successfully treated at NIH after contracting Ebola from a patient at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas. Pham has since successfully recovered from the disease and been released from the hospital.

The recent arrival of the American nurse comes one day after Time Magazine named its "2014 Person of the Year" as "The Ebola Fighters," describing those aid workers who are on the front lines in West Africa has selfless heroes.

"Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the Christian medical-relief workers of Samaritan's Purse and many others from all over the world fought side by side with local doctors and nurses, ambulance drivers and burial teams," Nancy Gibbs, the magazine's editor, wrote in a foreword for the annual feature.