NBC cameraman with Ebola in good spirits, parents say

The parents of an American freelance cameraman diagnosed with Ebola said Friday that their son was in good spirits.

"Obviously he is scared and worried," Dr. Mitchell Levy said of his son, Ashoka Mukpo, who was hired Tuesday to be the second cameraman in Liberia for NBC's chief medical editor and correspondent Dr. Nancy Snyderman.

Mukpo has been "seeing the death and tragedy and now it really hit home for him. But his spirits are better today," added Levy, who appeared on NBC's Today show with his wife, Diana Mukpo.

Their 33-year-old son was being treated in the Liberian capital of Monrovia and was scheduled to return to the United States during the weekend for treatment, his mother said.

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"I think the enormous anxiety that I have as a mother or that we share as parents is the delay between now and him leaving on Sunday," she said, adding she hopes his symptoms do not worsen rapidly. The couple lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

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. Mukpo often visits the city. His mother’s first husband founded the Shambhala Buddhism community.

David Mukpo said his brother had worked in Liberia on and off for several years, working as a journalist for Vice and Al-Jazeera.

“When Ashoka first went to Liberia, you have a tremendous amount of fear and a tremendous amount of anxiety about it, but at a certain point you stop having that be a part of your day-to-day life,” David Mukpo said. “When he tells you he feels he can make a difference in a place he actually cares about, it’s hard for me to let my own fear for him get in the way of what he feels is the right thing to do.”

David Mukpo said his initial fear upon hearing the news was quickly replaced by doing what was necessary to get Ashoka home. 

“The hardest part is knowing Ashoka’s alone out there and he doesn’t have us with him. Whatever we can do to get him back as soon as possible is the top priority for everyone.”

Snyderman and her team also were returning to the U.S. and being placed in quarantine for 21 days "in an abundance of caution," NBC News President Deborah Turness said Thursday.

In a phone interview with Today on Friday, Snyderman said all the gear she and her crew used was being disinfected because they all shared work space and vehicles.

She believes she and her team were at a low risk because they have been "hyper-vigilant."

Mukpo has been working in Liberia for three years for Vice News and other media outlets.

Before the Ebola outbreak, he had been doing nonprofit development work in Liberia, said Philip Marcelo, a Boston-based Associated Press reporter who met Ashoka Mukpo last year while on assignment in Liberia for The Providence Journal.

Marcelo said Mukpo was a researcher for the Sustainable Development Institute, a Liberia-based nonprofit shining light on concerns of workers in mining camps outside Monrovia.

"He really was into the culture," Marcelo said. "He seemed to have a lot of passion for it."

ABC News said Levy issued a statement saying his son has been involved in human rights works in West Africa for the last several years and was aware of the risks. But he felt compelled to go back to Liberia when the Ebola crisis erupted.

"Doctors are optimistic about his prognosis," Levy said.