Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

NBC Photographer With Jewish Roots Recovers From Ebola Virus

The NBC photographer with a biological Jewish father who was diagnosed with Ebola is free of the virus.

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

Mukpo was the first U.S. journalist known to have contracted Ebola. He is the fifth Ebola patient 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. That country was a second home to me and I had to help raise the alarm,” he said in a statement.

As an infant, Mukpo was identified as a reincarnated Tibetan lama, a role he did not embrace though he is still a practicing Buddhist.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.