Kent brantley biography

Kent Brantly is an American doctor with the medical mission group Samaritan's Purse.
Kent Brantly is an American doctor with the medical mission group Samaritan's Purse.
Kent Brantly, 33, was fervently hoping that his body would rally to fight the virus.

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Surviving Ebola

When medical missionary Dr. Kent Brantly emerged from the back of a Grady ambulance on Saturday afternoon, August 2, clad in a full-body protective suit and holding onto his EMS escort for support, he became the first Ebola patient to set foot on American soil.

He walked slowly and steadily toward the back of Emory University Hospital, where the special isolation unit's infectious disease team was awaiting his arrival. Outside, media satellite trucks lined Clifton Road, reporters were doing live feeds in front of the hospital, and television helicopters hovered overhead.

Inside, however, the mood was calm and focused.

Despite the fact that Brantly was walking on his own, he was a very sick man. He had acquired the deadly Zaire strain of Ebola while working with patients at a Liberian hospital, and the disease was pillaging his body, causing a life-threatening metabolic imbalance and heart arrhythmia. "I was focused on putting one foot in front of the other," he said later.

Emory's medical team had been in communication with Brantly's doctors in Monrov

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Ebola survivor Dr. Kent Brantly: Why my family and I returned to Liberia

It was a year ago that Ebola — and Dr. Kent Brantly — became household names. In his own words, Dr. Brantly discusses the need for awareness, and explains why his family returned to the west African nation.

Last month my family and I returned to our Liberian home for the first time since the events of last July and August. For the first time since my near-death experience, we made the hour-long drive from Roberts International Airfield to the ELWA campus in Paynesville, on the outskirts of Monrovia.

We experienced a mix of emotions as we returned to our house on the beach: The trauma of all that occurred there last year — the patients we treated for Ebola, the overwhelming amount of death we encountered, my own life and death struggle against the villainous virus; the joy of times remembered — walks on the beach, dinner with neighbors, snorkeling during dry season; the losses suffered due to the Ebola outbreak — loss of friends and co-workers, loss of our community, loss of innocence as we faced the dea

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Time Magazine Honors Ebola Fighters

Samaritan's Purse doctor Kent Brantly is among those honored as Time's Person of the Year

Kent Brantly, the Samaritan’s Purse doctor who contracted and survived the deadly Ebola virus while caring for people stricken with the disease in Liberia this summer, is one of a courageous group selected as Time magazine’s 2014 Person of the Year.

“From the community health care volunteers in Liberia, to the dedicated staff of organizations like Samaritan’s Purse and MSF, to the doctors and nurses at Emory University Hospital, Ebola Fighters are mostly anonymous heroes whose diverse faces are largely unknown even to their patients as they wage this war in head-to-toe protective gear,” Dr. Brantly said. “It is these nameless champions that TIME has recognized today.”

The magazine said the title goes to an individual or group who, for better or worse, has had the biggest impact on the world and the news over the course of the previous year.

“We are grateful to Time magazine for recognizing the army of men