MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) — One of Liberia’s most
high-profile doctors has died of Ebola, officials said Sunday, and an
American physician was being treated for the deadly virus, highlighting
the risks facing health workers trying to combat an outbreak that has
killed more than 670 people in West Africa — the largest ever recorded.
A
second American, a missionary working in the Liberian capital, was also
taken ill and was being treated in isolation there, said the pastor of a
North Carolina church that sponsored her work.
Dr. Samuel
Brisbane, a top Liberian health official, was treating Ebola patients at
the country’s largest hospital, the John F. Kennedy Memorial Medical
Center in Monrovia, when he fell ill. He died Saturday, said Tolbert
Nyenswah, an assistant health minister. A Ugandan doctor died earlier
this month.
The American physician, 33-year-old Dr. Kent Brantly,
was in Liberia helping to respond to the outbreak that has killed 129
people nationwide when he fell ill, according to the North
Carolina-based medical charity, Samaritan’s Purse.
He was
receiving intensive medical care in a Monrovia hospital and was in
stable condition, according to a spokeswoman for the aid group, Melissa
Strickland.
"We are hopeful, but he is certainly not out of the
woods yet," she said.Early treatment improves a patient’s chances of
survival, and Brantly recognized his own symptoms and began receiving
care immediately, Strickland said.
The American missionary, Nancy
Writebol, was gravely ill and in isolation in Monrovia, her husband,
David, told a church elder via Skype, according to the Rev. John Munro,
pastor of Calvary Church in Charlotte, N.C.
Munro said the couple,
who had been in Liberia for about a year, insisted on staying there
despite the Ebola threat. "These are real heroes — people who do things
quietly behind the scenes, people with a very strong vocation and very
strong faith," Munro said.
There is no known cure for the highly
contagious virus, which is one of the deadliest in the world. At least
1,201 people have been infected in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea,
according to the World Health Organization, and 672 have died. Besides
the Liberian fatalities, 319 people have died in Guinea and 224 in
Sierra Leone.
Ominously, Nigerian authorities said Friday that a
Liberian man died of Ebola after flying from Monrovia to Lagos via Lome,
Togo. The case underscored the difficulty of preventing Ebola victims
from traveling given weak screening systems and the fact that the
initial symptoms of the disease — including fever and sore throat —
resemble many other illnesses.
Health workers are among those at greatest risk of contracting the disease, which spreads through contact
with bodily fluids.
Photos
of Brantly working in Liberia show him swathed head-to-toe in white
protective coveralls, gloves and a head-and-face mask that he wore for
hours a day while treating Ebola patients.
Earlier this year, the
American was quoted in a posting about the dangers facing health workers
trying to contain the disease. "In past Ebola outbreaks, many of the
casualties have been health care workers who contracted the disease
through their work caring for infected individuals," he said.
There
is no known cure for Ebola, which begins with symptoms including fever
and sore throat and escalates to vomiting, diarrhea and internal and
external bleeding.
The WHO says the disease is not contagious
until a person begins to show symptoms. Brantly’s wife and children had
been living with him in Liberia but flew home to the U.S. about a week
ago, before the doctor started showing any signs of illness, Strickland
said.
"They have absolutely shown no symptoms," she said.
A
woman who identified herself as Brantly’s mother said the family was
declining immediate comment when reached by phone in Indiana.
Besides
Brantly and the two doctors in Liberia, Sierra Leone’s top Ebola doctor
and a doctor in Liberia’s central Bong County have also fallen ill.
The situation "is getting more and more scary," said Nyenswah, the country’s assistant health
minister.
Meanwhile,
the fact that a sick Liberian could board a flight to Nigeria raised
new fears that other passengers could take the disease beyond Africa.
Nigeria’s
international airports were screening passengers arriving from foreign
countries, and health officials were also working with ports and land
borders to raise awareness of the disease. Togo’s government also said
it was on high alert.
Security analysts were skeptical about the usefulness of these measures.
"In
Nigeria’s case, the security set-up is currently bad, so I doubt it
will help or have the minimum effectiveness they are hoping for," said
Yan St. Pierre, CEO of the Berlin-based security consulting firm
MOSECON.
An outbreak in Lagos, a megacity where many lived in cramped conditions, could be a major public health
disaster.
The
West Africa outbreak is believed to have begun as far back as January
in southeast Guinea, though the first cases weren’t confirmed until
March.
Since then, officials have tried to contain the disease by
isolating victims and educating populations on how to avoid
transmission, though porous borders and widespread distrust of health
workers have made the outbreak difficult to bring under control.
News of Brisbane’s death first began circulating on Saturday, a national holiday marking Liberia’s
independence in 1847.
President
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf used her Independence Day address to discuss a
new taskforce to combat Ebola. Information Minister Lewis Brown said the
taskforce would go "from community to community, from village to
village, from town to town" to try to increase awareness.
In
Sierra Leone, which has recorded the highest number of new cases in
recent days, the first case originating in Freetown, the capital, came
when a hairdresser, Saudata Koroma, fell ill. She was forcibly removed
from a government hospital by her family, sparking a frantic search that
ended Friday. Kargbo, the chief medical officer, said Sunday that
Koroma died while being transported to a treatment center in the east of
the country.
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Associated Press writers Colleen Slevin in
Denver, Clarence Roy-Macaulay in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and Heather
Murdock in Lagos, Nigeria, contributed reporting.
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