Two American aid workers infected by the deadly Ebola virus in Africa will be evacuated to the United States by early next week, an international relief group said Friday.
Dr. Kent Brantly and missionary Nancy Writebol remain in critical condition, North Carolina-based Samaritan’s Purse said in a statement.
On Thursday, Emory University Hospital reported it is receiving a patient infected with Ebola, though it would not identify that individual. Samaritan’s Purse would not confirm where Brantly and Writebol are being sent for treatment, a spokeswoman for the group said Friday.
The patient headed to Emory is expected to arrive in the next several days and will be placed in a special treatment unit set up by the hospital and the Atlanta-based U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The unit has been up and running for 12 years and has two beds, Emory spokesman Vince Dollard said. It’s on the hospital’s first floor, away from other patients, Dollard added.
Bringing an Ebola patient to the U.S. does not pose a risk to the public, CDC spokeswoman Barbara Reynolds said in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Friday. In fact, she said, there is nothing about Ebola that necessarily requires the use of such a specialized treatment unit like the one at Emory.
“Ebola is a viral disease that is not transmitted from person to person through the air,” Reynolds said. “We have other diseases that can be quite frightening and deadly that do transfer through the air.”
The virus is instead passed through bodily fluids. A person with Ebola, which is a type of hemorrhagic fever, would also have to be showing signs of the illness, such as vomiting or diarrhea, to be able to infect other people, she said.
Reynolds added that over the past decade there have been five cases in the U.S. of people who suffered from other types of hemorrhagic fever, not Ebola, and were successfully treated without any secondary transmission.
“The health care system worked,” she said.
News of the Atlanta connection arrives as the Ebola outbreak continues to worsen in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. The death toll has now surpassed 700, and Sierra Leone’s president on Thursday declared a state of emergency, sending security forces house to house looking for people exposed to the disease. The outbreak so far has killed 60 percent of the people infected.
“This is a tragic, painful, dreadful, merciless virus. It’s the largest, most complex outbreak that we know of in history,” CDC director Thomas Frieden said in a news briefing.
He said it may take up to six months or longer to suppress the outbreak. There is no known cure for Ebola, which is characterized by sudden onset of fever, profound weakness, muscle pain, headache and sore throat. This is followed by vomiting, diarrhea, rash and, in some cases, both internal and external bleeding, according to the World Health Organization.
Emergency measures
The CDC on Thursday raised its threat level in West Africa to 3, the agency’s highest, and warned against nonessential travel to the three stricken nations. The agency also said it was sending 50 infectious disease specialists to West Africa during the next month. They will join the roughly two dozen already there. The CDC also is helping airports in Africa screen passengers for illness.
[From Thursday’s Associated Press report:] In Sierra Leone, which borders Liberia to the northwest, authorities are vowing to quarantine all those at home who have refused to go to isolation centers. Many families have kept relatives at home to pray for their survival instead of taking them to clinics.
Rosa Crestani, Ebola emergency coordinator for Doctors Without Borders, said it is crucial to gain the trust of communities that have been afraid to let health workers in and to deploy more medical staff.
“The declaration of a state of emergency in Sierra Leone shows a recognition of the gravity of the situation, but we do not yet know what this will mean on the ground. What we can say is that it will be difficult to implement due to the fact that the cases are dispersed over such a large area, and that we currently do not have a clear picture of where all the hot spots are,” she said.
Liberia’s president on Wednesday also instituted new measures aimed at halting the spread of Ebola, including shutting down schools and ordering most public servants to stay home from work.
“It could be helpful for the government to have powers to isolate and quarantine people and it’s certainly better than what’s been done so far,” said Dr. Heinz Feldmann, chief of virology at U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “Whether it works, we will have to wait and see.”
Minimal threat to U.S.?
Although this Ebola outbreak is the most virulent on record, experts on the virus expressed little concern that the virus would spread to other continents.
Agence France-Presse interviewed Dr. Peter Piot, co-discoverer of the virus and head of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who said there was little risk of a wider outbreak.
“Spreading in the population here, I’m not that worried about it,” he told the news agency.
“I wouldn’t be worried to sit next to someone with Ebola virus on the Tube as long as they don’t vomit on you or something,” he said, referring to London’s underground train system. “This is an infection that requires very close contact.”
Ebola is spread through contact with bodily fluids and is not transmitted through the air, as with flu or other illnesses.
The New York Times reported that the International Air Transport Association also was playing down the hazards outside West Africa. The association, which represents most major airlines, said in a statement Thursday that the WHO had not recommended travel restrictions or border closures.
“In the rare event that a person infected with the Ebola virus was unknowingly transported by air, WHO advises that the risks to other passengers are low,” the statement said.
Ebola is spread only by people with severe symptoms, it said. “It is highly unlikely that someone suffering such symptoms would feel well enough to travel.”
American aid workers
Samaritan’s Purse, the Texas charity that employs Brantly, said on Thursday that an experimental serum arrived in Liberia Wednesday.
“But there was only enough for one person,” said Franklin Graham, president of Samaritan’s Purse, said in a statement on the organization’s website. “Dr. Brantly asked that it be given to Nancy Writebol.
“However, Dr. Brantly received a unit of blood from a 14-year-old boy who had survived Ebola because of Dr. Brantly’s care,” Graham said. “The young boy and his family wanted to be able to help the doctor that saved his life.”
The site said both patients are in stable but grave condition, and Brantly “took a slight turn for the worse overnight.”
Meanwhile, quoting an unidentified source, CNN reported that a medical charter flight left Cartersville Thursday to evacuate the two Americans from the Liberian capital, Monrovia.
About the Author
