Finally, some good news! Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol have been released from Emory Hospital in Atlanta. Doctors there say they have been completely cured.
According to ABC News:
Brantly, 33, called his recovery "a miraculous day."
"I am thrilled to be alive, to be well, and reunited with my family," he said.
He also told a news conference at Emory Hospital that "God saved my life."
Both patients were given blood and urine tests to determine whether they still had the virus, Emory doctors said in a statement released this morning.
"After a rigorous course of treatment and testing we have determined...that (Brantly) has recovered from the Ebola virus disease and he can return to his family, to his community, and to his life without any public health concerns," Dr. Bruce Ribner, director of Emory’s Infectious Disease Unit, said today.
Brantly said that when Writebol left the hospital on Tuesday, she asked him to speak on her behalf to the public and express gratitude for prayers on her behalf.
"When she walked out of the room, all she could say was ‘To God be the glory,’" Brantly recalled. "Nancy and (her husband) David are now spending some much needed time together."
Writebol's husband said in the statement that his wife left the hospital in a "significantly weakened condition."
"We are tremendously pleased with Dr. Brantly and Mrs. Writebol's recovery," Ribner said. "All of us who have worked with them have been impressed by their courage and determination. Their hope and faith have been an inspiration to all of us."
Ribner emphasized that though there is public fear and anxiety about Ebola, there is no threat to public health with the patients' release.
http://abcnews.go.com/...
I wish that whatever they did for these two brave people could be copied overseas. But it all boils down to money and resources. If the international community doesn't want this thing to go global, they will move hell and high-water to see that whatever needs to be done, is done. I'm not sure what effect, if anything, the experimental drug they used had, but they need to step up their production and testing efforts because the situation is getting desperate.
Security forces have blocked off a seaside slum in Liberia's capital, stepping up the government's fight to stop the spread of Ebola.
In central Monrovia there were few cars or people about as nervous residents stayed inside after president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf ordered West Point sealed off and imposed a night-time curfew, saying that authorities have not been able to curtail the spread of Ebola in the face of defiance of their recommendations.
Ms Sirleaf also ordered gathering places such as cinemas and nightclubs shut and put Dolo Town, 30 miles (50 kilometres) south of the capital, under quarantine as well.
"These measures are meant to save lives," she said in an address on Tuesday night.
Ebola has killed at least 1,229 of the more than 2,200 people it has sickened in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria in the outbreak, according to World Health Organisation figures. Liberia has the highest death toll and its number of cases is rising the fastest.
http://www.independent.ie/...
11:07 AM PT: They say blood and urine samples were taken, however, they didn't mention another bodily fluid. One of my concerns is this. Not to get too indelicate, but according to WHO:
"Men who have recovered from the disease can still transmit the virus through their semen for up to 7 weeks after recovery from illness.
http://www.who.int/...
Then there's this Salon article:
Yes, Ebola can be sexually transmitted
Ebola is transmitted through contact with body fluids, such as blood, vomit, feces, sweat, saliva or tears — or semen. That’s right: Ebola can be sexually transmitted.
But, as Vanderbilt University infectious disease specialist William Schaffner explained to Live Science, the likelihood of contracting Ebola via sexual intercourse is extraordinarily slim:
Unlike people with the flu or HIV, those who are infected with Ebola aren’t contagious until they start showing symptoms. By that point, having sex would be the last thing on a patient’s mind, Schaffner said. …
The virus lurks in low numbers in the body during the first phases of infection. As a result, Ebola virus isn’t present in bodily fluids until people feel sick — usually too sick to be intimate. But there have been too few cases of the disease for researchers to pinpoint the exact onset of contagiousness …
In one case, a lab worker who contracted Ebola still carried traces of the virus in his semen for approximately two months after recovering from the illness. Some studies suggest that the disease could remain in semen for up to 12 weeks after recovery, as happens with similar viruses, and that it might be possible to transmit Ebola sexually even after the worst of it is over for a patient.
http://www.salon.com/...
Yes, they say the risk is negligible, but it's still a risk. Anyway, Brantly and Writebol were treated in a top hospital, so I'm going to assume (yeah, I know, that's dangerous…anyway), I'm going to assume Dr. Brantly's semen was tested as well. Perhaps the drug they gave him eradicated the virus from his body…everywhere.