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KANNAPOLIS, NC — The mother, sister and nephew of the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the U.S. sat down for the first time together with WCCB’s Courtney Francisco to explain more about Eric Duncan’s trip to America.
Health officials are monitoring at least 50 people n Texas who may have come in contract with Duncan before doctors isolated him for Ebola.
“It’s a scary situation,” said Josephus Weeks.
It’s difficult for Weeks to imagine his uncle quarantined, fighting the virus. Perhaps more difficult, he says he knows it could all be happening in the Charlotte area.
“He would have been here, he has a son here, too,” said Weeks.
The plan was for Duncan to see one of his sons graduate high school in Texas. Then, he would come to Kannapolis.
“He was so excited, ‘Man, I can’t wait to come up there!’,” said Weeks.
Those plans were sidetracked with the Ebola virus.
The Liberian government says they will charge Duncan if he comes back because they believe he took care of a pregnant woman who died from the virus and lied at the airport to get to America.
His nephew tells WCCB that’s not the case.
“Based on my conversation with Eric, he wasn’t even in the vicinity when this transpired,” said Weeks. “He said, ‘No. I wasn’t even in the area. I moved a long time ago.’ He doesn’t know where he got it from. He didn’t even know he had it.”
Weeks says if he knew he could have been infected, his uncle would have never got on a plane. “He wouldn’t have come here and risked his son, you know? If he thought he had Ebola. He’s that type of man. He’s very kind. He’s very courageous. He wouldn’t have risked anyone else.”
Duncan’s sister, Mai, asked us not to reveal her last name. She says doctors won’t give her answers when she tried to check on her brother.
“When I call, they told me we have to go through the state now and the county to get information,” said Mai. “I don’t want details, just tell me how he’s doing, okay? How was his night?”
Duncan’s worried mother, Nowah, whose last name we are also concealing, asked WCCB to send those doctors a message on her behalf.
“Tell the doctor, the nurses, to please take care of him for me so I can be able to see him. I know this country is a great country,” said Nowah.
Family members Duncan came in contact with in Dallas are now staying in a private home. He was in an apartment with his 13-year-old nephew, Oliver, his two sons (both in their 20s), and his partner for days before doctors quarantined him. The Center for Disease Control kept those four in the apartment for nearly a week, checking their temperatures twice a day. Crews did not begin removing Duncan’s hazardous waste until Friday, the same day they took the family to a new location.
“They’re terrified,” said Weeks. “There’s no one in the United States of America that wants to even go inside that apartment, let alone live there and eat there, sleep there, use the facilities there. That’s inhumane.”
Weeks still wonders if his uncle would have made it to North Carolina, “What if? That could have been us. We would have been quarantined. All the stuff going on, our lives would have been torn upside down.”
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