NBC photographer with Jewish roots recovers from Ebola

Ashoka Mukpo is fifth patient in US to fully recover from disease

By JTA 23 October 2014, 4:07 am

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In this Oct. 5, 2014 file photo, hazardous material cleaners disinfectant their personal protective equipment after working in the apartment where Thomas Eric Duncan, the Ebola patient who traveled from Liberia to Dallas, stayed in Dallas. (Photo credit: AP/LM Otero, File)

NBC photographer Ashoka Mukpo is free of the Ebola virus and will leave the hospital.

Mukpo, whose biological father is Jewish, is expected to leave the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha on Wednesday, Reuters reported. He arrived there from Liberia on Oct. 6.

He was the first US journalist known to have contracted Ebola and the fifth patient with the disease treated in the United States to fully recover, according to Reuters.

Mukpo was raised in Colorado by the late Tibetan Buddhist leader Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche; his mother was one of his several wives. His biological father, Mitchell Levy, one of Trungpa’s followers, is Jewish, The Associated Press reported. Mukpo’s mother and Levy married after Trungpa’s death.

Levy told the AP that his son was filming inside and around clinics and high-risk areas in Liberia but didn’t know how he became infected.

Mukpo returned to the West African nation in August to cover the epidemic.

“I don’t regret going to Liberia to cover the crisis,” he said in a statement. “That country was a second home to me and I had to help raise the alarm.”