Akinniyi Emmanuel Fadipe, who works at the First Consultants Hospital in Lagos where the the dreaded Ebola virus was first recorded in Nigeria after Liberian-American Patrick Sawyer arrived Lagos with the virus in July 2014, and survived an exposure to the virus, is now in the United States to donate blood and possibly participate in anti-Ebola research.

Fadipe is expected to visit BioBridge Global in San Antonio, Texas, today, Tuesday February 24 where he will donate blood and likely participate in research that could improve treatment options for Ebola patients.

A team from BioBridge Global’s South Texas Blood & Tissue Center will draw the blood. QualTex Laboratories, which is also a subsidiary of BioBridge, will screen the sample to see if Fadipe qualifies for a research project underway at XBiotech in Austin.

Researchers are searching for a treatment using antibodies in the blood of Ebola survivors. If Fadipe qualifies, a team from the Blood & Tissue Center will travel to Austin to draw his blood, which XBiotech researchers will use to help find a therapeutic for the Ebola virus.

Fadipe was part of the team that treated the first case of Ebola in Nigeria. He and three colleagues from First Consultants Medical Centre in Lagos contracted the virus and survived. Four of their co-workers died.

Dr. Rachel Beddard, medical director for BioBridge Global, said Fadipe “was in the trenches, treating Ebola patients at ground zero in Nigeria” and, therefore, his visit to San Antonio is critically important.

Fadipe and his team in Lagos established protocols that were considered instrumental in sparing Nigeria from a large-scale Ebola outbreak. In September of last year, the World Health Organization said the nation was free of Ebola.

Fadipe said “it is a small price to pay” to travel to Texas and give some blood if the result saves lives.

This is the second time in as many months that BioBridge Global has participated in a project supporting Ebola research. In January, a team from the Blood & Tissue Center traveled to XBiotech to draw the blood of Dallas nurse and Ebola survivor Amber Vinson. Her blood also came back to San Antonio to be tested by QualTex Laboratories.

Twenty-one cases of the dreaded disease and 9 deaths were recorded in Nigeria, before the country was declared Ebola-free on October 20.