Despite fears and protests over the bringing of Ebola-stricken patients to the U.S, Kent Brantly, an American doctor who has contracted Ebola, a highly fatal infectious disease, while looking after infected patients in Liberia, is now back in the U.S.
Brantly, who is now known as the first Ebola patient in the country, was flown by a small medical plane that is especially equipped to contain infectious diseases from West Africa, where over 1,300 individuals has so far been infected by the Ebola virus since the outbreak started earlier this year, to Dobbins Air Reserve.
Brantly was eventually taken by a police-escorted ambulance to an isolation unit at the Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, which is one of only four U.S. facilities that are equipped to test and handle patients who were exposed to dangerous pathogens such as SARS and Ebola.
The decision to bring home Brantly has been met with criticisms. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Tom Frieden said that his agency has received emails and calls from people who were against bringing Ebola-infected patients to the country but health experts said that the public should not fear as there is no risk of the disease spreading.
"There is zero danger to the U.S. public from these [two] cases or the Ebola outbreak in general," said Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease doctor from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. "People who have Ebola are not walking around on the street. They are very, very sick and pretty much confined to a hospital and to a bed."
Jay Varkey, an infectious disease specialist who will be involved in caring for Brantly at Emory said that unlike flu, the Ebola is not transmitted through air and can only spread through contact with bodily fluids such as blood, which supports Frieden's contention that any modern hospital that observes standard and rigorous measures to control infections should be able to contain the disease.
Bruce Ribner, an infectious disease specialist, who will be treating Brantly and Nancy Writebol, the other Ebola-stricken patient who will be flown from Liberia to the U.S. in the next few days, attested to the safety of Emory's isolation unit.
"Nothing comes out of this unit until it is non-infectious," Ribner told the Associated Press. "The bottom line is: We have an inordinate amount of safety associated with the care of this patient. And we do not believe that any health care worker, any other patient or any visitor to our facility is in any way at risk of acquiring this infection."
