Thread: U.S. doctor contracts Ebola

U.S. doctor contracts Ebola in Liberia

Medical staff take a blood sample from a suspected Ebola patient at the government hospital in Kenema(Reuters / July 27, 2014)

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Reuters
9:48 p.m. CDT, July 26, 2014

DAKAR—
A 33-year-old American doctor working for a relief organization in Liberia's capital has tested positive for the tropical disease Ebola, according to a statement from Samaritan's Purse.

Dr. Kent Brantly, medical director at one of the country's two treatment centers run by the organization, recognized his own symptoms and confined himself to an isolation ward.

It was not immediately clear how he caught Ebola. The relief group's Melissa Strickland said that he had followed strict safety protocols when treating patients.

"It's too early to try to explain it. We will have an intensive and thorough investigation," she said.

Across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, at least 660 people have died from the illness, according to the World Health Organisation, as poor, ill-equipped African governments have struggled to cope with the virus.

Ebola kills up to 90 percent of those who catch it, although the fatality rate of the current outbreak is lower at around 60 percent. Highly contagious, patients suffer from vomiting and diarrhea as well as internal and external bleeding.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/s...,2216754.story

• Ebola virus kills senior doctor in Liberia
  - American doctor in Liberia tests positive for Ebola

Ebola virus kills senior doctor in Liberia
Published July 27, 2014
Associated Press
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MONROVIA, Liberia – 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.


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