Dallas Nurse Thanks God After Being Declared Ebola-Free; Receives Hug From Obama
Nina Pham, a Dallas nurse who contracted Ebola after treating Liberian national Thomas Duncan in Texas, said she believes in the power of prayer, after she was declared virus-free and released from a Maryland hospital Friday. She also met President Obama at the White House, and received a hug.
"I first and foremost would like to thank God, my family and friends. Throughout this ordeal I have put my trust in God and my medical team," Pham said at a briefing about her treatment outside the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in Bethesda, Md., Friday.
"I believe in the power of prayer because I know so many people all over the world have been praying for me," she added, according to USA Today. "Although I no longer have Ebola, I know that it may be a while before I have my strength back."
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She said she feels "fortunate and blessed." She added, however, that the experience was "stressful and challenging" for her and her family.
Pham also thanked Dr. Kent Brantly, a Samaritan's Purse missionary from Texas who survived Ebola after contracting the deadly virus on a mission to Africa, for "his selfless act" of donating plasma during treatment.
Pham was confirmed to have Ebola in Dallas on Oct. 12. She was later shifted to NIH.
"She has no virus," declared Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who was also at the briefing Friday.
Five consecutive tests have confirmed she is free of the virus, he told reporters. However, he cautioned that that's not the norm for anyone to be declared free of Ebola, explaining that five tests were conducted only because the hospital is a research institute.
"The way you get Ebola is by direct contact with the body fluids of an ill individual. And if you don't have that, you do not have to worry about Ebola," he added.
He said it's important for people to "separate the issue of the risk to a general public with the risk with brave people like Nina and her colleagues — they're two different things."
Later on Friday, Pham met Obama in the Oval office, responding to the White House's invitation to her to meet the president.
She was told "that the president was interested in meeting her if she felt up to it," White House spokesman Josh Earnest was quoted as saying. "We do have the best medical infrastructure in the world," he said.
Pham is one of two Americans nurses who have been cured of Ebola. The other nurse, Amber Vinson, is being treated at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, and tests "no longer detect virus in her blood," according to the hospital.
Four people have been diagnosed with the deadly virus in the United States thus far.
A New York City doctor, Craig Spencer, tested positive for Ebola and was admitted to a hospital Thursday. He was treating patients in Guinea as part of his work with Doctors Without Borders.
Duncan died at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital earlier this month. The Liberian national, who came to the U.S. to marry his fiancée, had not been given any experimental treatment – such as ZMapp or convalescent serum made from the blood of Ebola survivors.
