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The Ebola Number You Haven't Heard: 80% Of U.S. Ebola Patients Have Survived

This article is more than 9 years old.

Ebola's a death sentence — or at least, that's the popular wisdom.

And in the current West Africa outbreak, that's not far from the truth.

The Ebola survival rate in Guinea might be somewhere around 30%. The Ebola survival rate in Liberia is likely similar.

But in the United States, the Ebola survival rate is 80%. Among the five Ebola patients with a known clinical outcome, four have been successfully discharged — three from Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, one from Nebraska Medical Center.

(Unfortunately, Thomas Duncan, the first person ever diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, died last week in a Dallas hospital.)

The U.S. Ebola survival rate will probably improve before it gets worse, too. Ashoka Mukpo, the NBC News cameraman who contracted Ebola in Liberia, is doing "quite well." Mukpo's expected to get discharged from Nebraska Medical Center in the next few days.

Also See: Ebola Is Scary. It's Also Beatable. Here's Why.

There's a lot to celebrate here. But before we go any further, let's acknowledge an obvious criticism: Measuring Ebola in the United States means relying on a tiny sample size.

U.S. hospitals have handled just a handful of Ebola patients, while Liberia and Guinea have treated thousands of patients in this Ebola outbreak. Just two bad outcomes and the U.S. survival rate for Ebola wouldn't be much better than the survival rate in West Africa.

And beyond the five patients with a known clinical outcome and Mukpo, two more Ebola patients (nurse Nina Pham and nurse Amber Vinson) are still in U.S. hospitals. Their current conditions are unknown.

Are there any lessons that we can draw here? Do we know enough to identify a secret behind the U.S. success?

At minimum, experts conclude that America's hospitals have notable advantages — particularly at Emory and Nebraska Medical Center, which have specially trained staff and specialized biocontainment units — that West Africa's hospitals generally don't. More resources to devote to round-the-clock care, for one.

That appears obvious in retrospect. But success didn't seem so assured when Emory leaders made a brave decision back in July to fly Ebola-infected missionaries Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol back to Atlanta. Some pundits scoffed and many Americans shuddered.

(Just look at the responses to this Sanjay Gupta post on Twitter. "I'm an RN [and] horrified this is happening," one woman tweeted. "To bring the deadliest disease on the planet to [the] U.S. is reprehensible," she added.)

Today, Emory's staff look like lifesavers.

And Emory's infectious disease chief made a bold statement in August that doesn't seem as shocking now.

"We would anticipate that … most patients, if they have not had any substantial organ damage, will make a full recovery," Dr. Bruce Ribner said at a press conference, after Brantly and Writebol had been discharged.

Also See: Emory's Already Treated Three Ebola Patients — And Saved Them All.

Look. Whatever you take from this article, remember that Ebola's an incredibly scary disease.

It may not be as contagious as some reports have suggested, but Ebola's ability to provoke a "cytokine storm" is dangerous and debilitating. Both Brantly and Writebol ultimately survived, but their doctors in Africa expected them to die.

(A third Emory patient — a World Health Organization doctor who's asked to remain anonymous — was touch-and-go too before pulling through. Emory on Monday announced that he'd been discharged.)

And Ebola's often unpredictable. Nina Pham and Amber Vinson still have a difficult road ahead of them. There may be other Ebola patients coming to America, or a few unexpected cases popping up among people who were accidentally exposed in recent weeks.

So there's reason to remain cautious.

But after a week of Ebola-related national fear, the U.S. survivability figures are an essential reminder:

There's also reason to hope.

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