Atlanta (CNN) — A seriously ill American Ebola patient arrived in his home country from Liberia late Saturday morning, delivered in a specially equipped medical plane on his way to an Atlanta hospital prepared to treat the first-ever Ebola victim known to be on U.S. soil.
An ambulance rushed Dr. Kent Brantly, one of two Americans stricken by the deadly viral hemorrhagic fever while helping with a major outbreak in West Africa, from Georgia’s Dobbins Air Reserve Base to Atlanta’s Emory University Hospital shortly after the plane landed.
Emory has said it will treat Brantly, 33, and eventually the other American — fellow missionary Nancy Writebol — in a special isolation unit, where physicians believe they’ll have a better chance to steer them back to health while ensuring the virus doesn’t spread.
Organizers expect the plane will return to Liberia to pick up Writebol, and they hope she can be brought to Georgia early next week, said Todd Shearer, spokesman for Christian charity Samaritan’s Purse with whom both Americans were affiliated.
Brantly, of Fort Worth, Texas, and Writebol, of North Carolina, became sick while caring for Ebola patients in Liberia, one of three West African nations hit by an outbreak that health officials believe has sickened more than 1,300 people and killed more than 700 this year.