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7/27/14

Health Alert: Ebola now taking toll on doctors

An Ebola outbreak that has killed more than 670 people in Africa is now taking a toll on doctors and health care workers battling the deadly disease.

A government official in Liberia said Sunday that one of that country's highest-profile doctors has died in what the World Health Organization (WHO) calls the largest recorded outbreak of the disease.

An American doctor who has been working in Liberia since October 2013 for the North Carolina-based aid organization Samaritan's Purse is receiving intensive medical treatment after he was infected with Ebola, according to a spokeswoman for the organization.

Melissa Strickland said Kent Brantly, 33, was in stable condition, talking with his doctors and working on his computer while being treated. She cautioned that he is "not out of the woods yet." Strickland said patients have a better chance of survival if they receive treatment immediately after being infected, as Brantly did.
Brantly, who is married with two children and is medical director for the Samaritan's Purse Ebola Consolidated Case Management Center in Monrovia, is being treated at a Samaritan's Purse isolation center, according to Strickland.

Samaritan's Purse said later Sunday that a second U.S. citizen, Nancy Writebol, also has tested positive for Ebola. Writebol is employed by mission group SIM in Liberia and was helping a joint SIM/Samaritan's Purse team treating Ebola patients in Monrovia. Writebol is married with two children, the organization said.

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