Texas Ebola Patient Thomas Duncan Prayed With Family on Phone
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Creatas/Thinkstock(DALLAS) — The patient who became the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States has been identified as a former chauffeur from Liberia who prayed with family members by phone on Wednesday.
The patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, is being treated at an isolation unit at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas.
Duncan, who is in his mid-30s, spoke on the phone with family members who live near Charlotte, N.C.
“We talked today (with Duncan) and we prayed together with his mother and sister here,” said Joe Weeks, who lives with Duncan’s sister Mai.
Weeks said that the family is concerned that Duncan was admitted to the hospital and put in isolation on Sunday, but hasn’t received the experimental Ebola drugs.
“I don’t understand why he is not getting the Zmapp,” Weeks said.
The manufacturer of the drug has said they have run out of the experimental medicine.
Duncan’s former boss in Monrovia, Liberia, said the patient had been his driver for the last year or two until he abruptly left his job in early September.
“I really don’t know” why he left, Henry Brunson, general manager of Safeway Cargo, told ABC News. “He didn’t resign. He just left the office. He just walked away.”
Brunson didn’t know where Duncan went until he saw him on the news as the Ebola patient in Dallas, Texas.
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