First EBOLA Case Recorded In The USA — Still None In Ghana

Medical officials in the United States announced on Tuesday the first case of Ebola to be diagnosed outside Africa in the latest outbreak, which has killed more than 3,000 people this year.
The patient, who has not yet been identified, is being treated in Dallas, Texas.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said the patient left Liberia in west Africa on 19 September, but did not develop symptoms until after arriving in the US. He was admitted to the Texas Health Presbyterian hospital in Dallas on Sunday.

Thomas Frieden, the director of the CDC, said the patient was being treated in isolation. All measures would be taken to ensure that the disease would not spread in the US, he said.

“I have no doubt that we will control this case of Ebola so that it does not spread widely in this country,” he told a news conference. The disease has spread rapidly in west Africa, killing more than 3,000 people since the outbreak began in March.

Frieden said the CDC believed it was the first case of the latest variant to be diagnosed outside Africa. “This is the first patient diagnosed outside of Africa to our knowledge with this particular strain of Ebola,” he said.
A spokeswoman for Dallas County health and human services department told the Guardian that it will be “conducting a public health follow-up” on the patient which will include investigating his travel history and recent activity.
Friedman said there was “zero risk” that the patient could have transmitted the disease on the flight from Liberia to the US, because he was not infectious at the time.

Doctors were discussing with the patient’s family the possibility of treating the patient with experimental therapies, Frieden said.
Health officials in Texas attempted to reassure residents. “Dallas county residents should not have any fears at this point, there is not an Ebola outbreak in Dallas county,” Zachary S Thompson, the Dallas county director of health and human services, told the Dallas Morning News earlier on Tuesday, before the case was confirmed.
“There are great mechanisms put in place in terms of our public health infrastructure to look at these particular situations and look at the proper response.”
The Texas patient is the fifth to receive treatment for Ebola in the US, and the sixth American to contract the disease: a civil servant with dual American-Liberian citizenship died in Monrovia last month. Dr Kent Brantly of Texas and Nancy Writebol, a missionary from North Carolina, were the first Ebola patients to be treated in the US.
Brantly and Writebol were treated in a bio-containment unit at Emory University hospital in Atlanta. Both patients received doses of an experimental drug which has since been depleted.

Dr Rick Sacra, the third US aid worker to contract Ebola while working at a hospital in the Liberian capital, Monrovia, was released from Nebraska Medical Center last week. Sacra went back to Monrovia after his colleagues Brantly and Writebol were diagnosed. There he treated obstetrics patients.
A fourth unidentified patient is being treated at Emory. The patient’s identity is not being revealed for confidentiality reasons, but he is believed to be a World Health Organization doctor who was working in an Ebola treatment center in Sierra Leone.

Posted in: