One Year Later, Emory's Medical Staff Looks Back On The Ebola Crisis

When Dr. Kent Brantly contracted Ebola during a medical mission to treat others with the disease in Liberia last summer, the U.S. State Department gave Emory University Hospital 72 hours notice before transferring Brantly into their doctors' care. "The first question was: Did we have the ability to care for these patients?" said Nancye Feistritzer, chief nursing officer of the hospital, as she reflected on the experience in the video above. "The second question was: Could we do it safely? "If the answer to both of those were yes," she added, "then it was really not a question of whether we should -- we would." Over the following days, as the doctors and nurses cared for Brantly, a second patient -- missionary Nancy Writebol -- was admitted to the hospital with Ebola, fueling even more media coverage and an increasingly concerned public. The hospital would go on to successfully treat four Ebola patients in total. "We can either let our actions be guided by misunderstandings, fear and self-interest, or we can lead by knowledge, science and compassion," Susan Grant, chief nurse for Emory Healthcare wrote in a Washington Post Op-Ed. "We can fear, or we can care." Under Emory's watchful eye, both Brantly and Writebol recovered the deadly disease, which killed more than 11,000 people during what's considered the largest Ebola outbreak in history, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On July 30, the World Health Organization announced that a new vac...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news