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Samaritan’s Purse physician contracts Ebola while serving in Liberia

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Dr. Kent Brantly
Dr. Kent Brantly

Here’s the story from the Samaritan’s Purse web site.

Excerpt:

Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol are in stable but grave condition. Dr. Brantly took a slight turn for the worse overnight. But even as he battles to survive Ebola, he received a remarkable gift from a patient he had helped to save.

“Dr. Brantly received a unit of blood from a 14-year-old boy who had survived Ebola because of Dr. Brantly’s care,” Samaritan’s Purse President Franklin Graham said. “The young boy and his family wanted to be able to help the doctor that saved his life.”

[…]Dr. Brantly, a family practice physician, was serving in Liberia through our post-residency program before joining the medical team responding to the Ebola crisis. His wife and two children had been living with him in Liberia but flew home to the U.S. before he started showing any signs of illness.

Last week, Dr. Brantly recognized that he had symptoms associated with Ebola, and immediately isolated himself.

[…]The deadly disease, which causes massive internal bleeding and has a mortality rate of 60 to 90 percent in most situations, has claimed more than 725 lives.

[…]“There’s an incredible level of braveness in Kent,” Robert Earley, president and CEO of JPS Health Network, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “You don’t meet people like this every day.”

Yahoo News has more about this fine man:

Even from his own sickbed in Africa, American physician Kent Brantly continues putting the well-being of others before his own.

Brantly, a medical missionary in West Africa, and fellow American Nancy Writebol both contracted Ebola last weekend. They spent the past several days under quarantine and are struggling to survive.

On Wednesday, an experimental serum arrived in Monrovia, Liberia, but there was only enough dosage for one patient.

“Dr. Brantly asked that it be given to Nancy Writebol,” said Franklin Graham, president of Samaritan’s Purse, the Christian humanitarian organization Brantly is working for.

Late Thursday, officials at Emory University Hospital near the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta confirmed that one of the two aid workers will soon be brought to a special high-security ward there. The name of the patient was not revealed.

Brantly’s gesture of letting Writebol have the serum fits the description of selflessness and sacrifice the 33-year-old’s family back in the U.S. has given.

“Kent prepared himself to be a lifetime medical missionary,” his mother, Jan Brantly, told The Associated Press on Monday. “His heart is in Africa.”

After the merciful move for Writebol, a local family made its own offering to Brantly.

If you are a person who prays, say a prayer for this brave Christian man.

5 thoughts on “Samaritan’s Purse physician contracts Ebola while serving in Liberia”

    1. I want to hate it, but I can’t. I respect Brantly’s bravery, but I completely agree with Ann, down the line.

      Quote:

      Can’t anyone serve Christ in America anymore?

      No — because we’re doing just fine. America, the most powerful, influential nation on Earth, is merely in a pitched battle for its soul.

      About 15,000 people are murdered in the U.S. every year. More than 38,000 die of drug overdoses, half of them from prescription drugs. More than 40 percent of babies are born out of wedlock. Despite the runaway success of “midnight basketball,” a healthy chunk of those children go on to murder other children, rape grandmothers, bury little girls alive — and then eat a sandwich. A power-mad president has thrown approximately 10 percent of all Americans off their health insurance — the rest of you to come! All our elite cultural institutions laugh at virginity and celebrate promiscuity.

      So no, there’s nothing for a Christian to do here.

      If Dr. Brantly had practiced at Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles and turned one single Hollywood power-broker to Christ, he would have done more good for the entire world than anything he could accomplish in a century spent in Liberia. Ebola kills only the body; the virus of spiritual bankruptcy and moral decadence spread by so many Hollywood movies infects the world.

      If he had provided health care for the uninsured editors, writers, videographers and pundits in Gotham and managed to open one set of eyes, he would have done more good than marinating himself in medieval diseases of the Third World.

      Of course, if Brantly had evangelized in New York City or Los Angeles, the New York Times would get upset and accuse him of anti-Semitism, until he swore – as the pope did – that you don’t have to be a Christian to go to heaven. Evangelize in Liberia, and the Times‘ Nicholas Kristof will be totally impressed.

      Which explains why American Christians go on “mission trips” to disease-ridden cesspools. They’re tired of fighting the culture war in the U.S., tired of being called homophobes, racists, sexists and bigots. So they slink off to Third World countries, away from American culture to do good works, forgetting that the first rule of life on a riverbank is that any good that one attempts downstream is quickly overtaken by what happens upstream.

      America is the most consequential nation on Earth, and in desperate need of God at the moment. If America falls, it will be a thousand years of darkness for the entire planet.Not only that, but it’s our country. Your country is like your family. We’re supposed to take care of our own first. The same Bible that commands us to “go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel” also says: ”

      For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, ‘You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.’”

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  2. Yes,much of what Ann says is true. I have worked in missions in Africa and I left with many of these same impressions. I think some of her choice of words are harsh and unnecessary, and that will cause many not to heed her wisdom.
    All that said, I do feel there is a great need for missionaries to spread God’s word and his love around the world. But only if that is where one is clearly being called.

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  3. Not to overly beat the horse, but here’s one of many replies to Coulter’s column that I’ve seen. This, from ‘First Things’, was good, IMO……
    “….. Coulter is only right if speaking from the human perspective. She talks about wisdom and foolishness, but she doesn’t seem to understand that God has his own definition of these terms. A long time ago, another missionary once wrote some words that Coulter might want to consider.
    Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
    For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are,so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God,righteousness and sanctification and redemption,so that, as it is written,“Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”
    So maybe Coulter’s right. Maybe Dr. Brantly wasn’t “wise by worldly standards.” Maybe he was on a fool’s errand in his mission to demonstrate Christ’s love in Liberia. Christ crucified is folly to the Gentiles. ”
    Here’s the remainder of the content on the ‘First Things” blog…….
    http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2014/08/the-foolishness-of-an-ebola-doctor

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