Despite threats and negative criticisms that health authorities received for deciding to bring home Kent Brantly, an American doctor who contracted the Ebola virus in Liberia, the plan to treat Brantly in the U.S. has pushed through.
Efforts to save the doctor from the infectious and deadly disease are apparently working as top health officials announced on Sunday that Brantly appears to be improving. Brantly, who was leading efforts to help Ebola patients as the medical director of the Ebola Consolidated Case Management Center of the international relief organization Samaritan's Purse in Monrovia, Liberia when he contracted the disease, was flown in a small medical plane from West Africa and arrived in the U.S. on Saturday.
The doctor is now in an isolation unit of the Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, one of the four facilities in the U.S. that are equipped to handle patients exposed to dangerous viruses and bacteria.
"It's encouraging that he seems to be improving - that's really important - and we're hoping he'll continue to improve," said U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Tom Frieden on CBS's Face the Nation. Frieden, however, said that it is still too early to predict if Brantly would make it and Emory did not expect to give any update on the 33-year old doctor's condition on Sunday.
Ebola has no known cure and its fatality rate could be as high as 90 percent depending on the strain of the virus. Health experts, however, said that the chances of Brantly surviving is higher in the U.S., where he could receive the kind of care that would help his body become strong enough to fight the virus.
Bruce Ribner, the infectious disease specialist who will be involved in treating Brantly and Nancy Writebol, another American who was also infected with Ebola in Liberia, said that the crucial component in improving the chances of survival of Ebola patients is supportive care.
"We're talking about maintaining blood pressure," Ribner said. "We're talking about supporting respiration up to and including a respirator if the condition becomes that severe. People with Ebola virus infection may have kidney failure, so we are potentially talking about dialysis."
Brantly and Writebol were among those who contracted Ebola in an outbreak that has struck Guinea, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Liberia. Latest data from the World Health Organization show that more than 1,300 individuals have already contracted the Ebola virus and over 700 have already died because of the disease.
