Liberia Says It “Regrets” US Ebola Case

Patient zero: Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian national who had traveled to the U.S. from Liberia on September 20 to visit family, has been quarantined at a Dallas hospital after contracting Liberia. It was revealed that he helped carry an infected pregnant woman to a hospital, just four days before boarding a flight out of the Ebola-stricken country (Photo credit: Facebook)

GRAPHITTI NEWS gathered Liberia expressed regret on Thursday over one of its nationals carrying the Ebola virus from Monrovia to the United States.

The man -- the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola on US soil -- flew from Liberia and arrived in Texas on September 20 to visit family, falling ill four days later.

"The Liberian government is concerned and regrets that an individual travelling from Liberia was diagnosed with Ebola after arrival in the United States," Information Minister Lewis Brown said in a statement.

"Currently there are stringent screening measures in place at the Roberts International Airport which we believe are preventing the disease from spreading via air travel."

Ebola is transmitted through close contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person, but is only contagious when a patient is showing symptoms like fever, aches, bleeding, vomiting or diarrhoea.

"Consistent with the findings of the (US) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, we are led to believe that he posed no risks to other passengers or the crew with whom he travelled," Brown said.

He added that the incident had demonstrated "the clear international dimension of this Ebola crisis".

"For months now, the Liberian government has been stressing that this disease is not simply a Liberian or West African problem. The entire international community has a stake in defeating Ebola," he added.

US officials were scrambling to track down people in the Dallas area who may have had contact with Liberian patient, as the death toll from the West African outbreak jumped to 3,338 dead from 7,178 infected.

Meanwhile Daily Mail reports it appears an act of compassion led Thomas Eric Duncan to contract Ebola, and become the first patient diagnosed with the deadly disease on U.S. soil.

Just four days before he boarded a plane bound for Dallas, Texas, Duncan helped carry his landlord's convulsing pregnant daughter to a Liberian clinic to be treated for Ebola, the New York Times reports.

The woman, named by The Times as 19-year-old Marthalene Williams died the next day, after being turned away from the overcrowded hospital that didn't have room for her. 

The landlord's son and three neighbors who came in contact with the woman also died soon afterwards.

But Mr Duncan wasn't showing any symptoms when he arrived at a Monrovia airport on September 19, and therefore was allowed on a flight out of Liberia bound for the U.S.