By Ron Harris, Associated Press
As the second deadliest Ebola outbreak in history rages in Congo, a doctor who survived the deadly disease five years ago worries that people aren’t paying enough attention.
“We need the United States government and the international community to step up in a bigger way to come to the assistance of the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo to help bring an end to that outbreak before more lives are lost,” Dr. Kent Brantly told reporters Friday.
Brantly, a missionary and doctor who was infected with the virus in 2014 while caring for patients in Liberia, was the first Ebola patient brought to the United States for treatment at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta.
Brantly’s arrival on Aug. 2, 2014, received intense news coverage, with cameras capturing him walking from an ambulance into the hospital in a white protective suit. In a recent interview with The Associated Press, he recalled talking to his wife right after that.
“She said ‘Kent, we watched you walk into the hospital,’” he said. “I said, you were watching me? And she said, ‘Oh, Kent, the whole world was watching you.’ I had no clue. No idea that people were paying attention.”
Brantly, who worked for the North Carolina-based aid organization Samaritan’s Purse, also remembered the moment in Africa when he received the bleak diagnosis.
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