An Ebola-infected surgeon from Sierra Leone who was receiving treatment in a US biocontainment unit has died.

Dr Martin Salia was flown to Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha on Saturday, becoming the 10th Ebola patient to be treated on American soil.

The hospital said that the 44-year-old was admitted in a critical condition, suffering from kidney and respiratory failure.

Dr Salia, from Sierra Leone, was married to a US citizen and maintained a residence in Maryland.

Isatu Salia said in a telephone interview with the AP news agency that her husband’s voice sounded weak and shaky when she spoke to him on Friday. But he told her "I love you" in a steady voice, she said.

The Nebraska hospital where Dr Salia was placed in isolation had successfully treated two other Ebola patients.

The surgeon was diagnosed with Ebola on 11 November after two initial tests for the virus came back negative.

He had been working as a general surgeon at Kissy United Methodist Hospital in the Sierra Leone capital of Freetown.

He is the second Ebola patient to die from the disease on US soil, after Liberian-born Thomas Eric Duncan lost his fight against the disease in a Dallas hospital last month.

The Ebola outbreak has killed more than 5,100 people this year, most of them in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.