Us doctor infected with Ebola is improving

An American doctor stricken with
the deadly Ebola virus while in Liberia and
brought to the United States for treatment in
a special isolation ward is improving, the top
US health official said on Sunday.
Dr Kent Brantly was able to walk, with help,
from an ambulance after he was flown on
Saturday to Atlanta, where he is being treated
by infectious disease specialists at Emory
University Hospital.
"It's encouraging that he seems to be
improving, that's really important and we're
hoping he'll continue to improve", said Dr Tom
Frieden, director of the Centres for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta.
Frieden told CBS's "Face the Nation" it was too
soon to predict whether Brantly would survive,
and a hospital spokesperson said Emory did
not expect to provide any updates on the
doctor's condition on Sunday.
Brantly is a 33-year-old father of two young
children who works for the North Carolina-
based Christian organisation, Samaritan's
Purse. He was in Liberia responding to the
worst Ebola outbreak on record when he
contracted the disease.
Since February, more than 700 people in West
Africa have died from Ebola, a hemorrhagic
virus with a death rate of up to 90% of those
infected. The fatality rate in the current
epidemic is about 60%.
Frieden told ABC's "This Week" that the CDC
was "surging" its response, and that it will
send 50 staff to West Africa "to help stop the
outbreak in the next 30 days".
Amber Brantly, Dr Brantly's wife, said she was
able to see her husband on Sunday and he was
in good spirits, and that the family is
confident he is receiving the very best care.
"He thanked everyone for their prayers", she
said in a statement.
A second US aid worker who contracted Ebola
alongside him, missionary Nancy Writebol, will
be brought to the United States on a later
flight. The medical aircraft is equipped to
carry only one patient at a time.
Standard treatment for the disease is to
provide supportive care. In Atlanta, doctors
will try to maintain blood pressure and
support breathing, with a respirator if
needed, or provide dialysis if patients
experience kidney failure, as some Ebola
sufferers do.
Confinement
Writebol, a 59-year-old mother of two who
worked to decontaminate those entering and
leaving an Ebola isolation unit in Liberia, was
due to depart for the United States overnight
on Monday, Liberia's information minister
said.
Writebol's husband, David, who had been living
and working in Liberia with his wife, was
expected to travel home separately in the next
few days, their missionary organisation, SIM
USA, said in a statement.
Separately, the charity medical teams
international said one of its doctors had
placed himself in voluntary confinement after
returning to the United States from Liberia on
25 July.
The doctor, Alan Jamison, worked in the same
isolation units as Brantly and Writebol, it
said, adding that he has no symptoms and
that there was no evidence he was exposed to
the virus.
The facility at Emory chosen to treat the two
infected Americans was set up with CDC and is
one of four in the country with the ability to
handle such cases.
The CDC has said it is not aware of any Ebola
patient having been treated in the United
States previously. Five people entered the
country in the past decade with either Lassa
Fever or Marburg, both hemorrhagic fevers
similar to Ebola.
President Barack Obama has said some
participants at an Africa summit in
Washington this week would be screened for
Ebola exposure. The CDC's Frieden said there
was no reason to cancel the event.
"There are 50 million travellers from around
the world that come to the US each year.
We're not going to hermetically seal this
country", he told Fox News on Sunday.