Ebola claims doctor's life, Liberia government says

MONROVIA, Liberia -- One of Liberia's most high-profile doctors has died of Ebola, a government official said Sunday, as two U.S. citizens were treated in the West African country after contracting the disease, highlighting the risks facing health workers trying to combat the spread of the deadly virus.

Dr. Samuel Brisbane was the first Liberian doctor to die in an outbreak the World Health Organization says has killed 129 people in Liberia and more than 670 in several West African countries. A Ugandan doctor working in the country died earlier this month.

The World Health Organization says the outbreak, the largest ever recorded, has killed 319 people in Guinea and 224 in Sierra Leone. As of Wednesday, the total number of cases in the three countries was 1,201, it said.

In Nigeria, officials announced Friday that a Liberian official died of Ebola after flying from Monrovia to Lagos via Lome, Togo. The case underscored the difficulty of preventing Ebola victims from traveling given weak screening systems and the fact that the initial symptoms of the disease -- including fever and sore throat -- resemble many other illnesses.

Health workers are at serious risk of contracting the disease, which spreads through contact with bodily fluids.

Dr. Kent Brantly, 33, an American helping respond to the outbreak in Liberia, is receiving intensive medical treatment at a hospital in Monrovia after he was infected with the virus. Brantly is the medical director for the North Carolina-based group Samaritan's Purse. He had been working with the aid organization in Liberia since October as part of the charity's post-residency program for doctors, said Melissa Strickland, a spokesman for the group.

Brantly was in stable condition, she said.

Ken Isaacs, a vice president of Samaritan's Purse, identified the second American, Nancy Writebol, as a worker with an allied aid group SIM, or Serving in Mission, which runs the hospital where Samaritan's Purse has an Ebola care center. He said she was in serious but stable condition.

"She is showing full symptoms of the disease," Isaacs said. He added that Writebol had been working as a hygienist who decontaminated those entering and leaving the Ebola care area at the hospital.

He said both Americans have since been isolated and are under intensive treatment.

Earlier this year, Brantly was quoted in a posting about the dangers facing health workers trying to contain the disease.

"In past Ebola outbreaks, many of the casualties have been health care workers who contracted the disease through their work caring for infected individuals," he said.

Brisbane, who once served as a medical adviser to former Liberian President Charles Taylor, was working as a consultant with the internal medicine unit at the country's largest hospital, the John F. Kennedy Memorial Medical Center in Monrovia.

After falling ill with Ebola, he was taken to a treatment center on the outskirts of the capital, where he died, said Tolbert Nyenswah, an assistant health minister.

He added that another doctor who had been working in Liberia's central Bong County was also being treated for Ebola at the same center where Brisbane died.

The situation "is getting more and more scary," Nyenswah said.

News of Brisbane's death first began circulating on Saturday, a national holiday marking Liberia's independence in 1847.

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf used her Independence Day address to discuss a new task force to combat Ebola. Information Minister Lewis Brown said the task force would go "from community to community, from village to village, from town to town" in order to increase awareness.

Meanwhile, the fact that a sick Liberian could board a flight to Nigeria raised new fears that other passengers could take the disease beyond Africa.

Nigeria's international airports were screening passengers arriving from foreign countries, and health officials were also working with ports and land borders to raise awareness of the disease. Togo's government also said it was on high alert.

Security analysts were skeptical about the usefulness of those measures, however.

"In Nigeria's case, the security set-up is currently bad, so I doubt it will help or have the minimum effectiveness they are hoping for," said Yan St. Pierre, chief executive officer of the Berlin-based security consulting firm MOSECON.

There is no known cure for Ebola. The West Africa outbreak is believed to have begun as far back as January in southeast Guinea, though the first cases weren't confirmed until March.

Since then, officials have tried to contain the disease by isolating victims and educating populations people on how to avoid transmission, though porous borders, satellite outbreaks and widespread distrust of health workers have made the outbreak difficult to get under control.

Information for this article was contributed by Clarence Roy-Macaulay and Heather Murdock of The Associated Press.

A Section on 07/28/2014

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