Ashoka Mukpo, journalist with Ebola, returns to North America
33-year-old has Halifax ties
The parents of a Canadian-American video journalist with Halifax ties who was infected with Ebola in Liberia says their son is frightened, but remains strong as he returned to North America Monday.
Ashoka Mukpo, 33, arrived by ambulance at the Nebraska Medical Center, where he will be kept in a specialized biocontainment unit built specifically to handle this type of illness.
“He’s enormously relieved to be here,” his mother, Diana Mukpo, told reporters. “Of course, it’s still quite frightening, but he’s hanging in and he sounds very strong.”
Mukpo was working in Liberia as a freelance cameraman for NBC News when he became ill last week. He is the fifth American sickened with Ebola to return to the U.S. for treatment during the latest outbreak, which the World Health Organization estimates has killed more than 3,400 people.
Ashoka Mukpo was born in British Columbia and lived in Halifax. He holds dual Canadian and American citizenship.
Three of his brothers live in Halifax, where the family moved in the late 1980s and stayed until the early 1990s. Ashoka Mukpo often visits the city. His mother’s first husband founded the Shambhala Buddhism community.
His father, Mitchell Levy, told reporters Monday that his son had lots of opportunity to be exposed to the deadly virus, but he’s not certain how he contracted it.
“He looks strong,” Levy said. “He walked off the plane, gingerly, waved to us. We saw him from a distance wheeled into a room."
He said his son spent two years working for an NGO in Liberia and returned to the United States in May. But he made a “strong connection” with Liberia and felt compelled to go back to cover the Ebola crisis.
With files from Associated Press