Blood brothers: Ebola-infected doctor gets blood from Ebola-surviving doctor

Dr. Rick Sacra, who is sick with Ebola at the Nebraska Medical Center has been given a unit of blood donated by fellow physician Dr. Kent Brantly, who recovered from the virus at Emory University Hospital. Both the Nebraska medical facility and humanitarian organization Samaritan’s Purse told Fox News that Sacra received two transfusions of Brantly’s “convalescent serum,” which could be likened to blood plasma. Brantly -who has the same blood type as Sacra- had previously been administered a unit of blood from a recovered 14 year old boy he had treated in Liberia; seems it was time to pay it forward.

Experts say that the evidence that blood-derived products are helpful to patients is not conclusive, but the World Health Organization has given the go-ahead to using blood from survivors, mostly for want of a better alternative -or of any alternative, for that matter. “This is something that’s fairly simple to do,” as London’s School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine director Dr. Peter Piot put it. In addition to blood from a survivor, Brantly took the experimental drug ZMapp -as did another health worker, Nancy Writebol. It is not clear how much either treatment improved his condition, and since doctors are fresh out of ZMapp, they opted for the next best thing and settled on Brantly after considering other donors. Sacra’s physician Dr. Phil Smith believes Brantly’s blood may contain antibodies that can hopefully “jump start (Sacra’s) immunity”.

“We are hoping most of all that what is learned from Rick’s and his colleagues’ illness can open up viable possibilities for the treatment of Ebola in West Africa where the suffering is now extending far beyond the victims of the virus itself,” Sacra’s wife Debbie said yesterday afternoon, adding that “it really meant a lot to us that he was willing to give that donation so soon after his recovery”. The 51 year old doctor has been treated with another, as yet undisclosed, experimental therapy. Since the unnamed drug is still in early stages of development, Smith was asked not reveal its name. The WHO hopes that at least 5 of the ten treatments that have been successful in animals can eventually be tested in humans.

Although Dr. Smith doesn’t “know how much of his recovery is due to the drug, how much is due to the convalescent serum and how much to the aggressive intravenous fluids,” Mrs. Sacra is happy to report that her husband is continuing to improve and that “he’s going to be ready to go back,” as soon as he get his bearings. “He loves Liberia. He loves taking care of the old people. He loves joshing with the young men,” she said. “They say he is a Liberian with white skin;” in other words, he is kind of like a Lawrence of Africa. William Pooley, a British nurse who recovered from Ebola also plans to go back, taking advantage of the fact that survivors become immune to the virus.

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