|
 A plane equipped to transport Dr. Kent Brantly and missionary
Nancy Writebol back to the country can carry only one patient back
at a time and it was unclear early on Saturday which of the two
would be arriving first.
"We have learned that we will be receiving a patient with Ebola at
Emory University Hospital on Saturday," Holly Korschun, spokeswoman
for the facility where they will be treated, said late on Friday.
"The second patient was going to follow in the next few days," she
added.
Despite alarm by some in the United States over the transport,
health officials have said bringing the sickened aid workers into
the country would not put the American public at risk.
 The patients were helping respond to the worst West African Ebola
outbreak on record with the North Carolina-based Christian
organization Samaritan's Purse and missionary group SIM USA when
they contracted the disease. Since February, more than 700 people in
the region have died from the infection.
The facility at Emory, set up with the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, is one of only four in the country and is
physically separate from other patient areas, providing a high level
of clinical isolation.
"We have a specially designed unit, which is highly contained. We
have highly trained personnel who know how to safely enter the room
of a patient who requires this form of isolation," Bruce Ribner, an
infectious disease specialist at Emory, told a news conference on
Friday.
Ribner said he hoped the medical support available at Emory could
improve the chances of survival from that seen on the ground in West
Africa.
[to top of second column] |
The hemorrhagic virus can kill up to 90 percent of those who become
infected, and the fatality rate in the current epidemic is about 60
percent.
Brantly, a 33-year-old father of two young children, and Writebol, a
59-year-old mother of two, will each arrive at Dobbins Air Reserve
Base outside Atlanta before being transported to Emory, officials at
the Pentagon and the hospital said.
The two will be treated primarily by a team of four infectious
disease physicians. The workers will be able to see loved ones
through a plate glass window and speak to those outside their rooms
by phone or intercom.
Samaritan's Purse and SIM said they were sending 60 healthy U.S.
staff and family members home from Liberia by this weekend as well.
(Additional reporting by Colleen Jenkins in Winston-Salem, N.C.,
Missy Ryan and Mark Felsenthal in Washington, Barbara Goldberg,
Edith Honan, and Scott Malone in Boston; Writing by Curtis Skinner
Editing by Matt Driskill)
[© 2014 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2014 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
