Health workers in protective suits transport Dr. Martin Salia, a surgeon working in Sierra Leone who had been diagnosed with Ebola, from a jet that brought him from Sierra Leone to a waiting ambulance in Omaha, Nebraska.

He will receive care at a biocontainment unit there where two other people with the disease have been successfully treated.

The hospital said the medical crew that accompanied Salia, 44, from West Africa determined he was stable enough to fly, but that the team caring for him in Sierra Leone indicated he was critically ill and “possibly sicker than the first patients successfully treated in the United States.”

Salia, a Sierra Leone citizen who lives in Maryland, first showed Ebola symptoms on Nov. 6 but tested negative for the virus. He eventually tested positive on Monday.