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CHARLOTTE, NC — While airport officials screen some passengers coming into the United States for signs of Ebola, health authorities in Dallas, Texas are monitoring a new patient who may have been infected with the virus.
The patient went to a care center in Frisco, Texas. He said he’d been outside the apartment where Eric Duncan stayed before doctors quarantined him in the hospital last week.
WCCB’s Courtney Francisco kept in contact with Duncan’s family throughout his treatment and up until his death Wednesday morning.
Duncan’s battle came with a fight from his nephew, Josephus Weeks, who advocated for his care from Kannapolis, N.C.
“We just hope he gets the necessary treatment that he needs to beat this,” Weeks told WCCB after Duncan was first hospitalized.
For nearly a week, family told WCCB that doctors treated Duncan with fluids and oxygen. Monday, doctors tried an experimental drug made in North Carolina, but two days later, Duncan died.
“He didn’t get that care, the care that he deserved like everyone else in America do, no matter what,” said Weeks.
Weeks was talking about the three American missionaries who survived Ebola after receiving never-before-used treatments immediately after hospitalization.
The fourth American patient, a news cameraman working in Liberia, also received a new medication the same day he landed in the U.S.
Duncan first showed up to the Dallas hospital on Sept. 25. He told doctors he was from Liberia. Still, doctors sent him home with antibiotics. Three days later, he came back to the hospital. At that point, doctors quarantined him.
The Texas Department of Health Services wrote in a statement: “The doctors, nurses and staff at Presbyterian provided excellent and compassionate care, but Ebola is a disease that attacks the body in many ways.”
An FDA spokesperson admits when a doctor requests drugs to treat Ebola, hospitals receive them in a matter of hour. They sighted no delay in Duncan’s treatment on their part.
“Eric is a family man. He’s still a person,” Weeks told WCCB before his uncle’s death.
Those family members and dozens of others who had contact with Duncan are still quarantined in Texas. Something Weeks pointed out could have easily played out 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 travel to North Carolina.
Duncan wrote his final message to his uncle online: “Looking at my great grandmother cry and I can’t do anything about it makes me sick. R.I.P. Uncle Eric.”
