The blood of Dr. Kent Brantly – an American missionary who survived Ebola – may hold the key to curing the deadly virus.
The 33-year-old has donated an entire unit of blood to help treat infected US doctor Rick Sacra, who was transported to Nebraska last week to receive treatment for the deadly disease, NBC News reports.
“He flew out from North Carolina to Nebraska to give a unit of blood,” Samaritan’s Purse CEO Franklin Graham said. “His blood was a perfect match.”
The idea of using serum from a survivor of a deadly disease is something that’s been done before, but has always been considered an experimental treatment.
When the World Health Organization was told last week that using such a procedure may actually work, they immediately thought it was a great idea and adamantly showed their support.
It is widely believed that the survivors of destructive diseases like Ebola could possibly aid in the successful treatment of others because they have antibodies to the virus in their blood which can send the sick patient’s immune system into overdrive.
Sacra, along with Brantly and medical missionary Nancy Writebol, is the third US aid worker to contract Ebola while treating patients in West Africa. The 51-year-old Boston physician was a volunteer working in Liberia for SIM USA, a North Carolina-based Christian group, when he started exhibiting symptoms of the virus.
The Ebola outbreak gripping West Africa has become the worst in history and has taken the lives of nearly 2,300 people, the WHO announced Tuesday.
As of this week, the disease-ravaged region has 4,293 total cases of confirmed, probable and suspected Ebola infections – a number the WHO warned could rise as high as 20,000.