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ATLANTA (FOX 5 Atlanta) – Back in the Emory University Hospital's Major Communicable Disease Unit for the first time in 5 years, Dr. Kent Brantley and Nancy Writebol and their families are surrounded by cameras and memories.
"People have asked me it was traumatic to remember the experience I had lived here," Brantly said. "It's not … I really have a feeling of nostalgia for my time in this unit.
When they arrived two days apart during the heat of the month of August 2014, the two missionaries of the SIM were wrapped in personal protective equipment, battling a virus that kills more of the half of infected people.
"There was a message on the whiteboard on the wall in the room that said," Welcome. We are glad that you are here, "recalls Dr. Brantly." And, I was really grateful to be again close to my family, even though I was still very sick and that's a good thing. 39 It was not obvious that I would survive, knowing that I was close to my family meant a lot. "
Brantly and Writebol had worked together in Liberia in a hospital that had quickly been transformed into an Ebola treatment center.
That's how they were infected, how they ended up here at Emory.
"And I can not wait to get back into this unit and wash my hands and smell this soap," Brantly says. "To remember how I felt at that time, when things had been so bad, but I knew everything would be fine.
Writebol says it was a blessing to live this experience with a friend.
"I remember picking up the phone in our unit, and Kent and I were spending a lot of time briefing us and talking about events, what we thought were the mistakes, and what had happened. "
Both were treated in adjoining rooms, in a unit with their own medical laboratory and nurses were at their side 24/7.
The Emory team has been training for years in the safe management of patients with highly infectious and dangerous diseases.
They had only two patients in the unit before Brantly and Writebol were flown to Atlanta.
"Health care providers did what they were trained for, and they did well," said Carlos Del Rio, director of the global health department at the Rollins School of Public Health. Emory University, and The survival of people with Ebola at Emory was 100%. And why was it 100%? Because it was the unit best prepared to do that. This was not accidental. "
Writebol and Brantly have fully recovered and returned to Africa.
This, while a new epidemic of Ebola is raging in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
She will go there to train trauma counselors to help Ebola survivors.
Brantly will be one of three doctors working in a 200-bed hospital in Zambia.
"The past five years," said Nancy Writebol. "But we are very grateful."
And this smell of hospital soap?
Kent Brantly says it's still there.
It's the scent of hope.
SEE ALSO: A former Ebola patient draws attention to the current epidemic
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