Kent Brantly, 33, an American doctor who has been working in Liberia since October for the North Carolina-based aid organization Samaritan's Purse, is receiving intensive medical treatment after he was infected with Ebola, according to a spokeswoman for the group.
Melissa Strickland said Brantly, who is married and has two children, was talking with his doctors and working on his computer while being treated.
A second U.S. citizen, Nancy Writebol, also has tested positive for Ebola, Samaritan's Purse said. Writebol is employed by mission group SIM in Liberia and was helping a joint SIM/Samaritan's Purse team treating Ebola patients in Monrovia. Writebol is married with two children, the organization said.
"Both of them tonight are in stable condition," Ken Isaacs, Samaritan Purse's vice president of programs and government relations, said Sunday. "But they are not out of the woods yet."
Isaacs said doctors and health care workers in West Africa often lack information about the disease, how it's spread and what to do if infected. Those medical professionals are often the first infected and spread the disease to their other patients. On Friday, he said, Samaritan's Purse staff saw 12 new Ebola cases; of those, eight were medical providers.
He is urging the USA, Canada and the European Union to pour resources into those countries to help them educate health care workers. "If Ebola is not fought and contained in West Africa, it will be fought somewhere else," he said.
A Ugandan doctor working in Liberia, where an Ebola outbreak has killed 129 people, died earlier this month. The current outbreak has claimed the lives of 319 in Guinea and 224 in Sierra Leone.
Last week, the medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders announced that the chief doctor leading the fight against the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone, Sheik Umar Khan, had contracted the disease. Three nurses who worked in the same Ebola treatment Center as Khan, 39, are believed to have died from the disease.
Two U.S. citizens are now reported to be infected with the deadly and incurable Ebola virus in West Africa.
The first American reported to have contracted the disease is an American doctor working with Ebola patients in Liberia, North Carolina-based Samaritan's
Purse issued said in a news release on Saturday.
The second person who reportedly tested positive for Ebola is a woman employed by an aid organization in Liberia who is a married mother of two.
In a statement on Sunday, Samaritan's Purse said: "Nancy Writebol is employed by SIM in Liberia and was helping the joint Samaritan's Purse/SIM team that is treating Ebola patients at the Case Management Center in Monrovia."
Writebol is a hygienist from Charlotte, N.C.
Earlier, Samaritan's Purse said Dr. Kent Brantly tested positive for the disease and was being treated at a hospital in Monrovia, Liberia. Brantly is the medical director for the aid organization's case management center in the city.
Brantly, 33 and originally from Indianapolis, has been working with Samaritan's Purse in Liberia since October 2013 as part of the charity's post-residency program for doctors, said the group's spokeswoman Melissa Strickland. The organization's website says he had worked as a family practice physician in Fort Worth, Texas.
Strickland said Brantly has been talking to his medical team and working on his computer since entering treatment.
Samaritan's Purse Vice President Ken Isaacs told CBS News his group is investigating how the two contracted the virus.
"Dr. Brantly and Nancy are both in stable condition tonight," Isaacs said. "They have fevers, they have body aches and pains. They are not out of the woods yet. So our prayer is that they survive and tonight they're in stable condition."
Ebola can have up to a 90-percent fatality rate, although those chances decrease when the disease is spotted and treated early, which was the case with both Brantly and Writebol.
The deadly disease has killed at least 672 in several African countries since the outbreak began earlier this year.
"It is a very dangerous infection and every medical person who takes care of these people understands, there is a risk, even if you are perfect in using all the gear," said William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University.
Fears of the outbreak have prompted neighboring Nigeria to screen incoming airline passengers for symptoms of the illness.
"The risk from casual contact from people who have come back from Africa is really zero, " Schaffner said. "It is the fact that you have to have very intimate contact with peoples' bodily fluids that puts you at risk."
Still, just this week a group of doctors and nurses from in Minneapolis cancelled a medical mission to Liberia to provide free surgeries for 200 kids. The group decided the danger is just too great.
One of Liberia's most high-profile doctors died of Ebola, a government official said Sunday, highlighting the risks facing health workers trying to combat the deadly disease.
Dr. Samuel Brisbane is the first Liberian doctor to die in an outbreak the World Health Organization says has killed 129 people in the West African nation. A Ugandan doctor working in the country died earlier this month.
The WHO says the outbreak has also killed 319 people in Guinea and 224 in Sierra Leone.
Brisbane, who once served as a medical adviser to former Liberian President Charles Taylor, was working as a consultant with the internal medicine unit at the country's largest hospital, the John F. Kennedy Memorial Medical Center in Monrovia.
After falling ill with Ebola, he was taken to a treatment center on the outskirts of the capital, where he died, said Tolbert Nyenswah, an assistant health minister.
Under the supervision of health workers, family members escorted the doctor's body to a burial location west of the city, Nyenswah said.
He added that another doctor who had been working in Liberia's central Bong County was also being treated for Ebola at the same center where Brisbane died.
The situation "is getting more and more scary," Nyenswah said.
A health official says a senior doctor working at Liberia's largest hospital has died of Ebola.
Tolbert Nyenswah, an assistant health minister, said Dr. Samuel Brisbane died Saturday at an Ebola treatment center on the outskirts of the capital, Monrovia.
He is the first Liberian doctor to die in an outbreak the World Health Organization says has killed 129 people in the country. The WHO says the outbreak, the largest ever recorded, has also killed 319 people in Guinea and 224 in Sierra Leone.
Health workers are at serious risk of contracting the disease, which spreads through contact with bodily fluids.
Sierra Leone's top Ebola doctor fell ill with the disease last week, and the aid group Samaritan's Purse said Saturday that an American doctor in Liberia was also sick.
Sources:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/07/27/ebola-africa-disease-epidemic/13236743/
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/american-doctor-in-west-africa-contracts-deadly-ebola-virus/
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/07/27/ebola-virus-kills-senior-doctor-in-liberia/
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