BOONE, N.C. — Dr. Kent Brantly, Medical Director for Samaritan’s Purse Ebola Consolidated Case Management Center in Monrovia, Liberia tested positive for the deadly Ebola virus.
The Doctor from Fort Worth, Texas worked with Ebola patients in West Africa.
Brantly is undergoing treatment at a Samaritan’s Purse isolation center at ELWA Hospital.
Samaritan’s Purse says the disease causes massive internal bleeding and has a mortality rate of 60 to 90 percent. The outbreak is prominent in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia and has killed more than 600 people in West Africa.
Harrison Sakela was the first person to survive the Ebola disease in Liberia. Since Sakela’s survival, there have been 27 more survivors at Samaritan’s Purse case management centers at Foya and ELWA Hospital in Monrovia.
Sakela described having the disease saying, “I first had a headache and then my whole body was warm. But the worst was the weakness that came.” He said, “You have no strength to even walk.”
Ebola has no cure but if detected early, the fatality rate can be decreased from 90-percent to 30 to 40-percent. Samaritan’s Purse says the supportive care includes effective rest and fluids.
Samaritan’s Purse says they are doing everything possible to help Dr. Brantly during this time of crisis. Brantly’s wife and children are in the U.S.
The picture is provided by the Samaritan’s Purse website with a caption that reads, “Dr. Kent Brantly gives orders for medication to administer to the Ebola Patients through the doorway of the isolation unit. Dr. Brantly spent almost four hours in the Tyvek suit in order to care for the three patients in the unit.”
