In this undated photo released by the Center for Disease Control, a Aeromedical Biological Containment System which looks like a sealed isolation tent for Ebola air transportation is shown. On Thursday afternoon July 31, 2014, officials at Atlanta’s Emory University Hospital said they expected one of the Americans to be transferred there “within the next several days.” The hospital declined to identify which aid worker, citing privacy laws.
The spread of Ebola across West Africa has the world on notice; consequently, the United States aims to send around 50 public health experts to the region to combat the disease. So far, two American health workers have become ill with Ebola and are currently being treated using extreme precautionary measures.
RELATED: All You Need to Know About the Ebola Virus
Keep Up With Face2Face Africa On Facebook!
Dr. Kent Brantly is one of two American aid workers that have tested positive for the Ebola virus while working to combat an outbreak of the deadly disease at a hospital in Liberia.
A top U.S. health official says that the Ebola outbreak can be contained and stopped but acknowledges it is out of control. Dr. Kent
Brantly, the first of the workers to be reported stricken with Ebola, arrived in the United States on Saturday at a military base before heading to Emory University Hospital. His condition is already said to be improving.
From the BBC:
Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, announced the new U.S. measures in an interview with ABC’s “This Week.”
“We do know how to stop Ebola. It’s old-fashioned plain and simple public health: find the patients, make sure they get treated, find their contacts, track them, educate people, do infection control in hospitals.”
The experts would arrive in West Africa within 30 days to fight what he called the “scary” disease.
Aid worker Nancy Writebol will soon arrive in the States after she was also diagnosed with the disease. The infected are transported from West Africa to the United States in a special airplane outfitted with a tent to contain their infection. The plane can only carry one passenger at a time. Writebol is set to come back home at an unknown time.
Thus far, more than 728 lives in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia have been claimed at the hands of Ebola. When untreated, the disease causes severe flu-like symptoms, which then lead to hemorrhaging from orifices and internally.
The National Institutes of Health have a test vaccine for the deadly virus coming this September.
