Kent Brantly

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Kent Brantly
Kent Brantly.png
Brantly visiting the White House, September 16, 2014
Born
Education Abilene Christian University
Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis
Occupation(s)Physician, author, speaker
Years active2009-present
Known forTreating, contracting, and surviving Ebola virus disease
Medical career
ProfessionMedical missionary
FieldMedicine
Institutions Samaritan's Purse
Awards Time Person of the Year

Kent Brantly is an American doctor with the medical mission group Samaritan's Purse. While treating Ebola patients in Liberia, he contracted the virus. He became the first American to return to the United States to be treated for the disease. [1]

Contents

Life

Brantly was born in Indianapolis, the youngest of six children to Jim and Jan Brantly. He is married to Amber Brantly, and they have two children. [2]

Brantly attended Abilene Christian University in Texas, where he earned an undergraduate degree in biblical text in 2003. It was here, at ACU, where he pledged Pi Kappa, a men's social club founded on a deep sense of Christian brotherhood, regardless of which denomination that member belonged to. After leaving ACU, he earned his medical degree from Indiana University School of Medicine (within Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis) in 2009 and completed his family medicine residency and fellowship in maternal child health at John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas. [3]

Brantly and his wife served as medical missionaries in Monrovia, Liberia, with World Medical Mission, the medical arm of Samaritan's Purse. After contracting the Ebola virus in summer 2014, he was evacuated to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, where he recovered and was later reunited with his family. He now serves as the medical missions advisor for Samaritan's Purse and lives with his family in Texas. [4]

Brantly's first public speaking engagement after his release from Emory hospital was on October 10, 2014, at his alma mater, Abilene Christian University. [5] In September 2014, he testified at a joint Senate hearing on the Ebola crisis in West Africa and met privately with President Barack Obama at the White House. [6] That month he donated his plasma three times to American Ebola patients. [7]

In 2014, he, along with other medical professionals involved in treating Ebola patients, became Time magazine's Person of the Year. [8] [9]

In 2015 Brantly gave the invocation at the National Prayer Breakfast attended by President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama. [10]

On July 21, 2015, the Brantlys released a book written with biographer David Thomas titled Called for Life: How Loving Our Neighbor Led Us Into the Heart of the Ebola Epidemic published by WaterBrook Press. [11]

After surviving Ebola, Brantly made the decision to return to Africa for medical missions in 2019. Brantly gave a brief statement of why he decided to return despite his near-death situation of contracting Ebola. Brantly stated:

“It’s been five years of emotional healing and spiritual healing and growth,” the doctor, 38, told The Christian Chronicle in an interview at the Southside Church of Christ in Fort Worth, his family’s home congregation for much of the last decade. “I think we’ve grown and been equipped in ways during this five years that we were not before we went to Liberia.” [12]

Related Research Articles

Samaritan's Purse is an evangelical Christian humanitarian aid organization that provides aid to people in physical need as a key part of its Christian missionary work. The organization's president is Franklin Graham, son of Christian evangelist Billy Graham. The name of the organization is derived from the New Testament Parable of the Good Samaritan. With international headquarters in Boone, North Carolina, the organization also maintains warehouse and aviation facilities in nearby North Wilkesboro and Greensboro, North Carolina.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas</span> Teaching hospital in the United States

Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas is a teaching hospital and tertiary care facility in the United States, located in the Vickery Meadow area of Dallas, Texas. It is the flagship institution of 29 hospitals in Texas Health Resources, the largest healthcare system in North Texas and one of the largest in the United States. The hospital, which opened in 1966, has 875 beds and around 1,200 physicians. The hospital is the largest business within Vickery Meadow. In 2008, the hospital implemented a program in which critical care physician specialists are available to patients in the medical and surgical intensive care units 24 hours a day, eliminating ventilator-associated pneumonia, central line infections and pressure ulcers. The hospital has maintained an active internal medicine residency training program since 1977, and hosts rotating medical students from University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emory University Hospital</span> Hospital in Georgia, USA

Wallace "Coach Bully" Bullington was a former American football player, coach, and college athletics administrator. He served Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas for 39 years as football player, assistant football coach, head football coach and athletic director before he retired from the university's athletic staff in 1988, but not before leading the school to its first national championship in 1973.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Western African Ebola virus epidemic</span> 2013–2016 major disease outbreak

The 2013–2016 epidemic of Ebola virus disease, centered in Western Africa, was the most widespread outbreak of the disease in history. It caused major loss of life and socioeconomic disruption in the region, mainly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The first cases were recorded in Guinea in December 2013; later, the disease spread to neighbouring Liberia and Sierra Leone, with minor outbreaks occurring in Nigeria and Mali. Secondary infections of medical workers occurred in the United States and Spain. In addition, isolated cases were recorded in Senegal, the United Kingdom and Italy. The number of cases peaked in October 2014 and then began to decline gradually, following the commitment of substantial international resources.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ebola virus epidemic in Sierra Leone</span>

An Ebola virus epidemic in Sierra Leone occurred in 2014, along with the neighbouring countries of Guinea and Liberia. At the time it was discovered, it was thought that Ebola virus was not endemic to Sierra Leone or to the West African region and that the epidemic represented the first time the virus was discovered there. However, US researchers pointed to lab samples used for Lassa fever testing to suggest that Ebola had been in Sierra Leone as early as 2006.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ebola virus epidemic in Liberia</span> Health disaster in Africa

An epidemic of Ebola virus disease occurred in Liberia from 2014 to 2015, along with the neighbouring countries of Guinea and Sierra Leone. The first cases of virus were reported by late March 2014. The Ebola virus, a biosafety level four pathogen, is an RNA virus discovered in 1976.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ebola virus cases in the United States</span>

Four laboratory-confirmed cases of Ebola virus disease occurred in the United States in 2014. Eleven cases were reported, including these four cases and seven cases medically evacuated from other countries. The first was reported in September 2014. Nine of the people contracted the disease outside the US and traveled into the country, either as regular airline passengers or as medical evacuees; of those nine, two died. Two people contracted Ebola in the United States. Both were nurses who treated an Ebola patient; both recovered.

Thomas Eric Duncan was a Liberian citizen who became the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the United States on September 30, 2014.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Responses to the West African Ebola virus epidemic</span>

Organizations from around the world responded to the West African Ebola virus epidemic. In July 2014, the World Health Organization (WHO) convened an emergency meeting with health ministers from eleven countries and announced collaboration on a strategy to co-ordinate technical support to combat the epidemic. In August, they declared the outbreak an international public health emergency and published a roadmap to guide and coordinate the international response to the outbreak, aiming to stop ongoing Ebola transmission worldwide within 6–9 months. In September, the United Nations Security Council declared the Ebola virus outbreak in the West Africa subregion a "threat to international peace and security" and unanimously adopted a resolution urging UN member states to provide more resources to fight the outbreak; the WHO stated that the cost for combating the epidemic will be a minimum of $1 billion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">West African Ebola virus epidemic timeline</span>

This article covers the timeline of the 2014 Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa and its outbreaks elsewhere. Flag icons denote the first announcements of confirmed cases by the respective nation-states, their first deaths, and their first secondary transmissions, as well as relevant sessions and announcements of agencies such as the World Health Organization (WHO), the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and NGOs such as Doctors Without Borders; medical evacuations, visa restrictions, border closures, quarantines, court rulings, and possible cases of zoonosis are also included.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Operation United Assistance</span>

Operation United Assistance was a 2014 United States military mission to help combat the Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa, including the part of the epidemic occurring in Liberia. The 101st Airborne Division headquarters was responsible for leading the mission.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aeromedical Biological Containment System</span>

The Aeromedical Biological Containment System (ABCS) is an aeromedical evacuation capability devised by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and government contractor Phoenix Air between 2007 and 2010. Its purpose is to safely air-transport a highly contagious patient; it comprises a transit isolator and an appropriately configured supporting aircraft. Originally developed to support CDC staff who might become infected while investigating avian flu and SARS in East Asia, it was never used until the 2014 Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa, transporting 36 Ebola patients out of West Africa.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cultural effects of the Western African Ebola virus epidemic</span>

The Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa has had a large effect on the culture of most of the West African countries. In most instances, the effect is a rather negative one as it has disrupted many Africans’ traditional norms and practices. For instance, many West African communities rely on traditional healers and witch doctors, who use herbal remedies, massage, chant and witchcraft to cure just about any ailment. Therefore, it is difficult for West Africans to adapt to foreign medical practices. Specifically, West African resistance to Western medicine is prominent in the region, which calls for severe distrust of Western and modern medical personnel and practices.(see Ebola conspiracies below.)

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ebola in Nigeria</span>

Cases of the Ebola virus disease in Nigeria were reported in 2014 as a small part of the epidemic of Ebola virus disease which originated in Guinea that represented the first outbreak of the disease in a West African country. Previous outbreaks had been confined to countries in Central Africa.

Ian Crozier is an American physician who contracted Ebola virus disease in September 2014, while working in West Africa.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tom Catena</span> American physician

Thomas Gerard Catena is an American physician who has been practising in Gidel in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan since 2008. On May 28, 2017, he was awarded the second annual Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity, receiving a $100,000 grant and an additional one million dollars for him to distribute to three humanitarian organizations. He has been likened to the 20th-century medical missionary Albert Schweitzer. The New York Times has published instructions on how to donate to Catena. In 2018, Dr. Catena was appointed Chair of the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Salome Karwah</span> Liberian nurse

Salomé Karwah was a Liberian nurse who was named co-Person of the Year by Time magazine in 2014 for her efforts to combat the West African Ebola virus epidemic. She appeared on the cover of Time in December 2014 with other health care workers and colleagues working to end the epidemic. Karwah survived ebola herself, before returning to work with Médecins Sans Frontières to help other patients afflicted with the disease. The actions of Karwah and other health care professionals are believed to have saved lives of thousands. However, two years later, Karwah died from complications of childbirth; her widower suggested that this might have been due to the widespread, mistaken belief that ebola survivors can still transmit the virus. Even before the ebola outbreak, Liberia had one of the highest rates of maternal mortality in the world.

Colleen S. Kraft is an infectious disease physician, associate professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, and the director of the Clinical Virology Research Laboratory at Emory University School of Medicine. In 2014, she led Emory University Hospital's effort to treat and care for Ebola virus disease patients and is currently working to address the COVID-19 pandemic in Georgia. She currently serves on Georgia's COVID-19 task force.

John J. Lowe is an American infectious disease scientist, assistant vice chancellor for health security at University of Nebraska Medical Center, and associate professor in the Department of Environmental, Agricultural and Occupational Health at University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Public Health. In 2014, he led Nebraska Medicine hospital’s effort to treat and care for Ebola virus disease patients and led the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s coronavirus disease 2019 response efforts.

References

  1. Dallas nurse infected with Ebola gets blood transfusion from survivor, Associated Press in Dallas, theguardian.com, Tuesday 14 October 2014 12.33 BST
  2. "The inside story of Ebola patient Dr. Kent Brantly's decision to serve in Liberia". 21 August 2014.
  3. "Fort Worth Doctor in Africa Treated for Ebola". 27 July 2014.
  4. "Ebola patients Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol discharged from hospital". CBS News . 21 August 2014.
  5. "Ebola Survivor Kent Brantly and Wife Visit Abilene Christian University for Homecoming". NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth. 10 October 2014.
  6. AbPhillip (16 September 2014). "Ebola survivor Kent Brantly met with President Obama in the Oval Office". Washington Post.
  7. "Why Blood Transfusions From Ebola Survivor Dr. Kent Brantly Could Help Patients". Student News Daily. 16 October 2014.
  8. Time Person of the Year, The Doctors, The Ebola fighters in their own words, Dec. 10, 2014
  9. Medical Missionaries' Ebola Pullback: No More Kent Brantlys?, Deann Alford/ Nov. 21, 2014
  10. Tryggestad, Erik (2015-02-06). "Dr. Kent Brantly prays at National Prayer Breakfast". Christian Chronicle. Retrieved 2015-02-06.
  11. Nishihara, Naomi (15 July 2015). "'Called for Life': Ebola survivor shares ordeal — his, Africa's — in memoir". The Dallas Morning News. Archived from the original on 17 July 2015.
  12. "Ebola survivor Dr. Kent Brantly returning to Africa as medical missionary".