Two Americans who are infected with the Ebola virus in Africa are being flown back to the United States for treatment.
A private jet equipped with a quarantine pod left Cartersville, Ga., Thursday afternoon headed for Liberia to evacuate Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, CNN reported.Brantly and Writebol, both Americans working for the faith-base charity Samaritan’s Purse, are said to be in stable but grave condition.The two volunteers came down with the deadly virus while caring for patients with Ebola at a hospital in Monrovia, Liberia.Emory University Hospital in Atlanta revealed Thursday that it expects to receive one of the patients within the next several days.
Meanwhile, fears about the disease are growing as world leaders and international health organizations struggle to try to stop the deadly outbreak in West Africa.
The Ebola outbreak “is moving faster than our efforts to control it,” Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organization, said in a statement Friday. “This is an unprecedented outbreak accompanied by unprecedented challenges. And these challenges are extraordinary.”This is the first Ebola outbreak in West Africa and involves the most deadly strain in the Ebola virus family, Chan said.”If the situation continues to deteriorate, the consequences can be catastrophic in terms of lost lives but also severe socioeconomic disruption and a high risk of spread to other countries.”
In light of the alarm being sounded by W.H.O., it seems like a strange decision given that all of West Africa is a “hot zone” and in quarantine. Many questions are being asked in the Twittersphere about the American patients coming home.
As a concerned healthy human myself, I’m curious why we can’t send all of our best medicine and equipment TO the Americans in the quarantine zone. It seems reckless and inexplicable to give the worst strain of the worst disease ever a first class plane ticket to North America.
But then again, I’m not one of the Obama Administration’s “smart people.”
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