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US Ebola patient is 'fighting for his life', official says

WASHINGTON: The Ebola virus didn't care that he was once considered a reincarnated Tibetan lama (high priest). Or that he was named after the great emperor Ashoka. Or that he had dedicated himself to highlighting how the world was seemingly abandoning the people of Liberia. The deadly disease struck Ashoka Mukpo , on Gandhi Jayanti.Ashoka, a freelance American journalist, had just joined media giant NBC the previous day when the fever hit him. He immediately phoned Mitchell Levy, his biological father (his spiritual father is the well-known Tibetan Buddhist monk Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche , who founded the Shambhala community that spread Buddhism in the US; his mother was married to Rinpoche before Levy married her). "Dad pick up your phone. Answer the phone. I think I'm in trouble," Ashoka, 33, beseeched his dad Levy in the voicemail from Ebola-hit Liberia.Levy was in a conference in Barcelona, and he rushed back to the US after hearing the symptoms and realizing Ashoka may have contacted the Ebola virus. On Monday, Ashoka was flown back to the US, the fifth American to be evacuated to the US since the outbreak began to affect foreigners.Thousands of Liberians aren't so fortunate. It was to report of their growing international isolation or forcible quarantine that Ashoka switched from being an aid worker to a journalist. He had worked at Human Rights Watch and spent two years in Liberia as a researcher for the Sustainable Development Institute, a non-profit shining light on concerns of workers in mining camps outside Monrovia, when he was bitten by the journalism bug.(Dr Mitchell Levy, father of Ashoka Mukpo, and his mother speak to members of the media at the Nebraska Medical Centre. Photo: AFP)"His intention in going back was to illustrate the tremendous burden and impact of the Ebola epidemic," Levy told a local newspaper in Rhode Island where Ashoka grew up. "He sensed that the international community was isolating Liberia rather than reaching out to help them."Mukpo told his father he was filming inside and around clinics and high-risk Ebola affected areas but didn't know how or when he was infected. On Monday, Mukpo was flown to Nebraska to one of the few advanced facilities in the US that is geared to treat Ebola — only for a small elite group of people fortunate to have access.The man who will oversee Ashoka Mukpo's treatment is a Pakistani-American physician who has been part of the US preparation against global pandemics and bioterrorism for nearly two decades. Dubbed the 'Virus Hunter', Ali Khan has led numerous public health emergency preparations in the US, from Sars and Bird Flu to anthrax and the presumptive zombie apocalypse.(An ambulance transports Ashoka Mukpo, who contracted Ebola while working in Liberia, to the Nebraska Medical Centre's specialized isolation unit. Photo: AP)Ebola is the latest battlefront for the man who published the country's first national public health preparedness plan, initiated syndrome based surveillance, and designed key focus areas to improve local and State capacities to respond to emergencies.America will need all of his expertize to thwart Ebola. Ashoka himself will need antibody transfusions from other Ebola affected victims, the latest medicines and prayers and blessings from his half-brother Gesar Mukpo, son of his mother Diana and Trungpa Rinpoche. Gesar was named a tulku (a reincarnation) and succeeded his father as leader of the Shambhala community after his death in 1987, while the younger Ashoka went into the more earthy endeavor of helping save people from deadly diseases.