Five Years Later

Ebola Survivors Return

Kent Brantley and children walk down a sidewal toward the viewer. — Physician Kent Brantly returns to Emory. He and Ebola survivor Nancy Writebol took part in a press conference and scientific symposium at Emory, five years to the day after Brantly was admitted to the isolation unit.

Aug. 2, 2014: Emory University Hospital's Serious Communicable Diseases Unit (SCDU) admits the first of four patients to be treated, successfully, for Ebola virus disease in the U.S.

“It’s a lot smaller than it looks in pictures,” said physician Kent Brantly’s young son, after he toured the isolation room where his dad spent weeks recovering from the deadly hemorrhagic fever. Brantly and fellow missionary and Ebola survivor Nancy Writebol took part in a press conference and scientific symposium at Emory, five years to the day after Brantly was admitted to the isolation unit. Speaking to the current outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), SCDU associate medical director Colleen Kraft said: “With Ebola still very much a global threat, our infectious disease physicians, nurses, and researchers are using the learnings from 2014 in everyday patient care and are working to find more therapies for challenging infectious diseases.” Brantly and Writebol are returning to Africa (Zambia and Liberia, respectively). As for the other Emory survivors, physician Ian Crozier is working in the DRC and Amber Vinson Markray is a nurse in Texas.