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First Dallas Nurse Discharged, Ebola-Free

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Dallas nurse Nina Pham, the first American to contract Ebola in the U.S., was discharged from the National Institutes of Health hospital in Bethesda this morning with no sign of the virus left in her system.

Pham is the seventh American to be cured of the virus, after catching it from Thomas Duncan, a Liberian traveler who brought the disease the U.S.

The family of Pham’s coworker Amber Vinson, who also caught the disease while treating Duncan, said she was virus-free earlier this week, but she has not yet been released from Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, where she’s being treated.

Pham and Vinson are the only two known Americans who have been infected with the Ebola virus in the United States. Six other Americans have been infected while working in Ebola-affected countries in West Africa, but zero Americans have died. Duncan, who flew to Dallas while infected, was the only patient who died of Ebola in the U.S.

Ashoka Mukpo, a freelance cameraman working in West Africa, was cured and released from a Nebraska hospital last week. Four health-care professionals caught the disease in West Africa. Dr. Kent Brantley and nurse Nancy Writebol; an anonymous American doctor who treated patients in Liberia; and an anonymous male doctor working with the World Health Organization in Africa, were all sent back to the U.S. for treatment and have been cured.

Craig Spencer, a New York City doctor who was treating Ebola patients in Guinea with Doctors Without Borders, was diagnosed with Ebola on Thursday and is being treated at Bellevue Hospital.

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Tags : ebola
Sarah Hurtubise