#Supernatural healing# nurse survives ebola

A TEXAS nurse who was the second US
healthcare worker infected with Ebola while
caring for a Liberian patient left the hospital
overnight after being declared cured of the
virus.
“I’m so grateful to be well and first and
foremost I want to thank God,” Amber Vinson,
29, said at a press conference at Emory
University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia.
Wearing a grey suit and pink blouse, Ms Vinson
appeared healthy and smiled often,
occasionally wiping away tears as the medical
team at Emory University Healthcare
surrounded her and her doctor spoke about her
care.
She also thanked her family and the medical
teams in Texas and Georgia, and asked for
people to continue to work to eradicate the
Ebola outbreak abroad.
“While this is a day for celebration and
gratitude, I ask that we not lose focus on the
thousands of families that continue to labour
under the burden of this disease in West
Africa.” Her colleague Nina Pham, 26, who also
worked in the intensive care unit of Texas
Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, was
treated for Ebola at the National Institutes of
Health Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland
and was released on Friday.
Both became infected while caring for a
Liberian man, Thomas Eric Duncan, who was
diagnosed with Ebola in Texas after flying to
the United States from his native Liberia, the
country hardest hit by West Africa’s Ebola
epidemic. He died on October 8.
Ebola has killed more than 4900 people and
infected more than 10,000 since the beginning
of the year, according to the World Health
Organisation.
Vinson’s story sparked alarm across the United
States after the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention said she flew on a domestic
aeroplane from Texas to Ohio and back, and
reported a low-grade fever before boarding the
flight home.
The CDC cleared her for travel at the time —
about a day before she was diagnosed with
Ebola — but said later she should not have
been travelling on a commercial airliner.
Vinson’s family hired a high profile Washington
lawyer, Billy Martin, after issuing a statement
earlier this month saying they were “troubled
by some of the negative public comments and
media coverage that mischaracterize Amber
and her actions.” “In no way was Amber
careless prior to or after her exposure to Mr.
Thomas Eric Duncan. She has not and would
not knowingly expose herself or anyone else,” it
said.
The release of Vinson leaves just one patient in
US hospital care for Ebola, doctor Craig
Spencer, at Bellevue Hospital in New York.
She is the fourth person to have been
successfully treated for Ebola at Emory
University Hospital, after missionaries Kent and
Nancy Writebol and another unnamed American
doctor who was sickened in Sierra Leone.
Bruce Ribner, medical director of the serious
communicable diseases unit at Emory
University Hospital, said the hospital was
pleased with Vinson’s quick recovery — she
was admitted there two weeks ago — but said
it was unclear exactly why she healed so fast.
Ribner said her young age might have helped,
as well as the fact that she was wearing
protective gear when she treated Duncan,
though it remains unknown how she was
infected.
“It is quite likely that the amount of virus that
she was exposed to was substantially less
than what we see in patients who get infected
in less developed countries,” he said
Another nurse who was held for days against
her will in a medical tent in New Jersey after
volunteering in West Africa was in an
“undisclosed location” in Maine, objecting to
both states’ Ebola quarantine rules as overly
restrictive.
While world leaders appeal for more doctors
and nurses on the front lines of the Ebola
epidemic, health care workers in the United
States are finding themselves on the defensive.
Lawyers now represent both Amber Vinson,
who contracted the virus while caring for a
Liberian visitor to Texas, and Kaci Hickox, who
is challenging the mandatory quarantines some
states have imposed on anyone who has come
into contact with Ebola victims.