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Posted on 08/21/2014 1:51:27 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The two American Ebola patients, medical missionaries Nancy Writebol and Dr. Kent Brantly, have walked out of Emory University Hospital in Atlanta infection-free.
They were the first human beings to receive an experimental drug called ZMapp. But they are not the first people to have recovered from Ebola, and good hospital care is likely more responsible for their recovery than any mysterious “serum," as the charities they work for termed it.
“They are the very first individuals to have ever receive this agent,” Dr. Bruce Ribner, director of Emory’s Infectious Disease Unit, told a news conference. “There is no prior experience with it, and frankly, we do not know whether it helped them, whether it made no difference, or even, theoretically, if it delayed their recovery.”
Ebola has infected 2,500 people in West Africa and killed 1,350 of them. That’s roughly a 50 percent fatality rate, but experts agree the true number of cases and deaths is not yet known because of the poor healthcare systems in the three affected countries and because many people hide when they get sick.
There’s no specific cure for Ebola, but doctors with experience treating it say they have found that if people get early supportive care, including saline solution and fever reducers, they are far more likely to recover.
Ribner says three weeks of treating Writebol and Brantly have shown them something else: Just like with cholera, patients have severe diarrhea and they lose important chemicals called electrolytes. Replacing these minerals — notably potassium, magnesium and sodium — helps patients recover better, he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
Who can be for certain if they really are cured? How man like them will infect others? No one really knows.
No doubt.
Ebola outbreaks first started in 1976, and there have been at least 18 of them, we probably know some things about it.
You ladies scare me
Got any LOTTO numbers?
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