A specially equipped medical plane whisked Ebola-stricken Dr. Kent Brantly from Liberia to Georgia on Saturday, setting up the latest leg of a race to save the man who’s now the first known Ebola patient on U.S. soil.
An ambulance rushed Brantly — one of two Americans seriously sickened by Ebola last month while on the front lines of a major outbreak in West Africa — from Dobbins Air Reserve Base to Atlanta’s Emory University Hospital shortly after the plane landed late Saturday morning.
Video from Emory showed someone wearing a white, full-body protective suit helping a similarly clad person emerge from the ambulance and walk into the hospital early Saturday afternoon.
Emory has said it will treat Brantly, 33, and eventually the other American — fellow missionary Nancy Writebol — in a special isolation unit, where physicians believe they’ll have a better chance to steer them back to health while ensuring the virus doesn’t spread.
Organizers expect the plane will return to Liberia to pick up Writebol, and they hope she can be brought to Georgia early next week, said Todd Shearer, spokesman for Christian charity Samaritan’s Purse with whom both Americans were affiliated.
Brantly, of Fort Worth, Texas, and Writebol, of North Carolina, became sick while caring for Ebola patients in Liberia, one of three West African nations hit by an outbreak that health officials believe has sickened more than 1,300 people and killed more than 700 this year.
Treatment at Emory hospital
Both Brantly and Writebol are to be taken to a special isolation unit at Atlanta’s Emory University Hospital.
Dr. Bruce Ribner, who oversees the unit, emphasized that precautions are in place to prevent the virus from spreading.
Everything that comes in and out of the unit will be controlled, he said, and it will have windows and an intercom for staff to interact with patients without being in the room.
The Emory unit was created in conjunction with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is based down the road. It aims to optimize care for those with highly infectious diseases and is one of four U.S. institutions capable of providing such treatment.
Still, Emory has not had any experience dealing with Ebola, nor has any U.S. medical facility had a known patient with the virus.
“This particular pathogen is new to the United States,” Ribner said.
In the 1990s, an Ebola strain tied to monkeys — Ebola-Reston — was found in the United States, but no humans got sick from it, according to the CDC.
The World Health Organization reports that the outbreak in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea has infected more than 1,300 people and killed more than 700 this year.
Ebola is not airborne or waterborne, and spreads through contact with organs and bodily fluids such as blood, saliva, urine and other secretions of infected people.
