Second American Infected With Ebola

A US aid worker has been infected with the deadly Ebola virus while treating victims of the disease at a hospital in West Africa.

Nancy Writebol, a missionary sent by the Calvary Church in North Carolina, becomes the second American citizen to contract the virus after Dr Kent Brantly, a doctor also working at an Ebola centre in the capital of Liberia, Monrovia.

On Saturday, Samaritan's Purse announced that American doctor Kent Brantly had become infected. The 33-year-old former Indianapolis resident had been treating Ebola patients in Monrovia and started feeling ill, spokeswoman Melissa Strickland said. Once he started noticing the symptoms last week, Brantly isolated himself.

Brantly, the medical director for Samaritan Purse's Ebola Consolidated Case Management Center in Monrovia has been in the country since October, Strickland said.

"When the Ebola outbreak hit, he took on responsibilities with our Ebola direct clinical treatment response, but he was serving in a missionary hospital in Liberia prior to his work with Ebola patients," she said.