Two Americans infected with Ebola while working in West Africa will be transported back to the U.S., where at least one of them will be treated at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, officials announced Thursday.
"I remain hopeful and believing that Kent will be healed from this dreadful disease," Amber Brantly, the wife of Dr. Kent Brantly, one of the infected,
told Reuters.
The state-of-the-art isolation and treatment unit at Emory is co-operated by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, and spokesperson Barbara Reynolds told reporters the U.S. State Department is also helping facilitate the transfer.
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Both Brantly and missionary Nancy Writebol contracted the Ebola virus in Liberia while helping treat a segment of more than 700 in the region who've been infected with and killed by the virus since February. The World Health Organization proclaimed the outbreak — which has affected Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone — the largest on record.
The CDC is unaware of anyone ever being treated for Ebola in the U.S., however Reynolds stated that five patients with Lassa Fever and Marburg Fever, hemorrhagic fevers similar to Ebola, have been.
The organization said that both patients "were in stable but grave" condition, and noted an abundance of caution is being taken as transport can adversely affect ill patients. It's not yet clear which one will be admitted to Emory.
Though there is no known cure for the Ebola virus disease, Writebol, 59, who was working on behalf of North Carolina-based Christian Relief groups Samaritan's Purse and SIM, was given an experimental drug that doctors hope will aid in a recovery. Brantly, 33, who was also working for the organizations, was given a unit of blood from a 14-year-old boy who he treated, and who survived the disease.
ABC affiliate 7 News Denver spoke with Dr. Connie Price, Chief of Infectious Diseases at Denver Health, and she confirmed that if someone unknowingly carrying the disease were to travel to the U.S., a mass outbreak would be unlikely.
"It's not very contagious," she explained. "It's not spread through the air in routine cases. You need to be exposed to some type of tissue, saliva, blood, or breast milk. It's direct contact."
She said that because of the treatment facilities and practices the U.S. has in place, those infected could be more easily identified, isolated, and treated.
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