GAIL DRAKE: Pioneering physician survives Ebola, maintains faith

“I thought I just had a cold. My temperature was 100.0 – higher than normal but not too concerning. I decided to stay home from work … to play it safe. I had just spent the last seven weeks fighting the world’s worst Ebola outbreak in Liberia, where I was working as a physician with Samaritan’s Purse.”

In October 2013, Kent Brantly and his wife Amber, a registered nurse, arrived in Monrovia, capital of Liberia, West Africa, to serve at the missionary hospital called ELWA (Eternal Love Winning Africa). He had earned his M.D. at Indiana University and was just months out of his residency.

“I took a rapid malaria test; it was negative – not a good sign. My fever hit 104.9. I felt nauseated and began having diarrhea. Eventually the team started an IV in my arm and gave me fluids. We all hoped it would be dengue fever.”

His colleague, American nurse Nancy Writebol, was also gravely ill. On July 26, 2014, medical director Dr. Lance Plyler peered into his bedroom window and confirmed the news: “Kent, bud. We got your test results, and I’m really sorry to tell you it is positive for Ebola.”

“Even with the bad news … I felt strangely at peace … with that peace that surpasses understanding. Since we had started treating patients with Ebola in Monrovia, we had only one survivor,” Brantly said.

Plyler, an internal medicine specialist of 25 years, frantically called contacts at the CDC and NIH and learned about two promising experimental treatments, one called ZMapp. He called the biomedical company president and was warned that while the serum had saved all 18 macaque monkeys who had been treated, it had never been tested in humans. But where in Africa to locate this drug? He found one in Sierra Leone and had it driven across borders and flown into the city.

One course of treatment, frozen into three doses. With strict instructions to use for one patient only, as the infection would flare up again without three doses. Brantly decided to give it to the nurse as his condition was stable. The next day Brantly’s condition deteriorated, his breathing fast and shallow with low oxygen levels. Plyler had no doubt that his friend and colleague had only hours to live. He called the families, ministry president Franklin Graham and they all prayed. Around the world, social media sites lit up with prayer. Then Plyler gave a dose to both patients.

He sat outside the window through the night, watching as the antibodies dripped into Brantly’s arm. Within an hour Brantly started shaking uncontrollably, clinically called rigors, a sign that the antibodies were saturating the virus. A few hours later the rigors subsided, Brantley’s temperature came down and his breathing was more regular. The next day Brantly got up and walked around the room. Nancy Writebol also improved after receiving a second dose of ZMapp. Both patients were evacuated from Liberia to Emory Hospital in Atlanta — as the world watched live. They received their final ZMapp doses and were treated until both recovered fully.

Kent Brantly became something of a celebrity, testifying before Congress and meeting with President Obama. He was named “Man of the Year” by Time magazine. In his 2015 commencement address at Indiana School of Medicine, he said, “I have learned that there was so much more to being a physician than curing illness. … The most important thing we do is enter into the suffering of others. We were able to hold the hands of people as they died, to offer dignity in the face of humiliating circumstances.”

In 2017, Samaritan’s Purse released a documentary film entitled “Facing the Darkness” in hundreds of theaters. All told, 11,300 from six countries died from the deadly Ebola outbreak.

“I still wrestle with the fact that I survived while West Africans died of the same disease,” Brantly said. “My faith is not what saved me. My faith is what tells me that even though I can’t understand, God is good. He is love and He will make all things right in the end.”

After five years of healing, prayer and quiet stability at home in Texas, the Brantlys announced to their church their new calling – to return to Zambia to a missionary hospital.

“[T]he commands He’s given us to plead with the world to come back to God are all inseparable from the command to love your neighbor as yourself and have compassion on those in need,” he said.