Story highlights
Dr. Rick Sacra, an American Ebola patient in Nebraska, is released from a medical center
Sacra received plasma from a survivor and an experimental drug
He has been declared free of the Ebola virus
Dr. Rick Sacra, who entered The Nebraska Medical Center three weeks ago with Ebola, was released Thursday.
“The CDC has declared me safe and free of the virus,” Sacra said at a news conference. “Thank God, I love you all!”
Sacra joked about now being a lifetime Huskers fan as he thanked his medical team, the biocontainment unit team and his friend, Dr. Kent Brantly.
Dr. Rick Sacra and Dr. Kent Brantly were both infected with Ebola while working in Liberia with the aid organization Serving in Mission. Both were evacuated back to the United States for care.
Brantly, who tested negative for the deadly virus after receiving treatment in Atlanta, flew to Nebraska where Sacra was in isolation and donated his blood two weeks ago. Doctors believe Brantly’s plasma had antibodies that Sacra needed to help his immune system fight the deadly virus.
The Nebraska Medical Center owns one of just a few biocontainment units that exist in the United States.
“I did say, wow, Nebraska? Who made that decision?” Sacra joked. “Once I heard about (the biocontainment unit) I was like cool, I’ve never been to Nebraska.”
In addition to the blood transfusion, doctors are giving Sacra aggressive supportive care to help his immune system fight the virus, including electrolytes and IV fluids.
The American patients at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta – Brantly and Nancy Writebol – were given an experimental drug called ZMapp, which was developed by the biotech firm Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc.
“I never felt like I was not going to make it,” he said. “The care was so excellent, so speedy, so prompt, that I’m just thanking God for that.”
Sacra says he is now feeling good, though he’s still very weak. He was up to five minutes on a stationary bike he had in his hospital room before being released, but even that tired him out.
What happens when you survive Ebola?
Sacra has done missionary health work for the past 25 years. He had flown to Monrovia in August after learning his colleagues from SIM had gotten sick. Sacra worried Ebola would cause a “domino effect” on the already vulnerable Liberian health care system and that people with common ailments wouldn’t get help.
When Sacra arrived in Monrovia, that’s exactly what he found. His spouse said there wasn’t a single pair of latex gloves to buy in the entire city.
When he was finally able to open the clinic, for some it was too late. She says dozens of pregnant women who needed Cesarean sections turned up at the clinic after having failed to find help anywhere else in the city.
By the time these women arrived at Sacra’s clinic “only the mothers’ lives could be saved.”
At the news conference, Rick Sacra thanked everyone around the world who had prayed for him during his time of need and asked for more prayers and practical health for the people of West Africa. “The Ebola crisis continues to spin out of control,” he said.
He and his wife will return home soon, where Sacra said he hopes to take his dog for a long walk. He knows his recovery will move slowly, as Brantly told him to “be patient.” But he is not ruling out an eventual return to Liberia, the country he called his second home.