The first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, Liberian national Thomas Eric Duncan, died yesterday at a Dallas hospital, a hospital spokesman said.
“It is with profound sadness and heartfelt disappointment that we must inform you of the death of Thomas Eric Duncan this morning at 7.51am,” hospital spokesman Wendell Watson said in an e-mailed statement.
Duncan became ill after arriving in the Texas city from Liberia on September 20 to visit family, heightening concerns the world’s worst Ebola outbreak on record could spread outside of the three worst-hit West African countries. About 48 people with whom Duncan had been in contact are being monitored.
Ebola has killed more than 3,400 people in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea since the outbreak began in March, nearly half of all those infected, accord-ing to the World Health Organisation.
While several American patients have been flown to the US from West Africa for treatment, Duncan was the first person to start showing symptoms of the disease on US soil.
A Spanish nurse who treated a priest who worked in the region is also infected.
Duncan was able to fly to the US from Liberia’s capital Monrovia, which is at the epicentre of the Ebola outbreak, because he did not have a fever when screened at the airport and filled out a questionnaire saying he had not been in contact with anyone infected with Ebola.
Liberian officials have since said that he lied on the questionnaire and had been in contact with a pregnant woman who later died of the disease. Ebola can take as long as three weeks before its victims show symptoms, at which point the disease becomes contagious. Ebola, which can cause fever, vomiting and diarrhoea, spreads through contact with bodily fluids such as blood or saliva.
Duncan began feeling ill shortly after his arrival in Texas. He went to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas on September 25, but was initially sent home with antibiotics.
His condition worsened, he returned on September 28 by ambulance and was diagnosed with the disease.