Panic, As Two Americans With Ebola Head Home

There is a great deal of panic nurtured by controversy in the US mainstream media as the first of two American aid workers infected with Ebola while working in West Africa are being brought back to the country.
In fact, yesterday, one of them was brought back home aboard a private air ambulance specially equipped to isolate patients with infectious diseases. The decision to convey the two Americans home has sparked off debate about the expediency or desirability of bringing back home the social and aid workers. The controversy about the decision came on as there was equal fervor about the desirability of concern for the two American citizens.
According to reports, the aid worker, who is believed to be the first patient with the virus will be treated at a hospital in the United States, will land at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta, northwest of Atlanta. When the afflicted aid worker arrived yesterday, he was driven by ambulance, with a police escort, to Emory University Hospital, which has a containment unit for patients with dangerous infectious diseases. The facility at Emory, in Atlanta, was built more than a decade ago with consultation from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has its headquarters nearby.
The second aid worker, still in a West African country, is expected to make a similar trip early this week should he survive. According to The New York Times, Emory, citing health privacy laws, has so far declined to identify the patient who will be the first to be admitted. The two Americans — Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol — were working at a hospital in Liberia that was treating patients suffering from Ebola.
“The reason we are bringing these patients back to our facility is because we feel they deserve to have the highest level of care offered for their treatment,” Dr. Bruce S. Ribner, an infectious disease specialist at Emory who will be involved in their care, said at a Friday afternoon news conference.
Both patients will receive what Dr. Ribner described as “supportive care” focused on maintaining their vital functions, like blood pressure and breathing.
“We depend on the body’s defenses to control the virus,” he said. “We just have to keep the patient alive long enough in order for the body to control this infection.”
Dr. Ribner said Emory would have a robust roster of medical workers handling the care of Dr. Brantly and Ms. Writebol, including four infectious disease doctors, a rotating cast of nurses and, as needed, subspecialists.
Dr. Alexander Isakov, the executive director of Emory’s Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response, said in an interview that the staff in the containment unit had volunteered to work there, and that some who were supposed to be on vacation offered to cancel their plans to take care of the new patients.
Dr. Brantly and Ms. Writebol will be housed in a unit that is small and positioned well away from other patients at the sprawling hospital. They will probably have limited contact with visitors, Dr. Ribner said, communicating with nonmedical personnel through telephones and an intercom system. A sheet of glass will separate the ill from the healthy.
The director of the disease centers, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, agreed that the patients posed little risk to others. And he added: “These are American citizens. American citizens have a right of return. I certainly hope people’s fear doesn’t trump their compassion.”
 Meanwhile, another report said yesterday that the infection of the two Americans would lead to immediate research on vaccines to treat Ebola. There is no known treatment at the moment as the deadly disease that claimed the life of a Liberian diplomat in Nigeria two weeks ago is confined to Africa.