Dr. Kent Brantly is the American doctor who has contracted Ebola while working in Liberia.
Brantly, 33, is a family physician and father of two who traveled in October to Monrovia in Liberia.
He started treating Ebola patients in June.
Even after contracting the illness, he asked his church to pray for others as well as himself.
“He has such a compassionate heart,” Jason Brewington, a church member who worked with Brantly at Fort Worth’s John Peter Smith Hospital, told the Dallas Morning News. “Even in the midst of this, he’s asking not just for himself, but for others.”
Brantly recognized he had symptoms associated with the deadly disease last week, and he was placed in isolation. He’s in stable but very serious condition with a fever and aches and pains, but is still working on his computer.
Dr. Kent Brantly is shown in this 2013 photo provided by JPS Health Network. A relief group official says Brantly is one of two American aid workers that have tested positive for the Ebola virus while working to combat an outbreak of the deadly disease at a hospital in Liberia. A spokesman said both Americans have been isolated and are under intensive treatment.(AP Photo/JPS Health Network)
This photo provided by the CDC shows an ebola Virus. U.S. health officials are monitoring the Ebola outbreak in Africa but say the risk of the deadly germ spreading to the United States is remote. (AP Photo/CDC)
In this photo taken on Monday, July 28, 2014, people hang out in a street under a banner which warns people to be cautious about Ebola, in Monrovia, Liberia. Two American aid workers in Liberia have tested positive for the virus and are being treated there. U.S. health officials said Monday that the risk of the deadly germ spreading to the United States is remote. (AP Photo/Jonathan Paye-Layleh)
Brantly is the medical director for the Ebola care center of the aid group Samaritan’s Purse in the Liberian capital of Monrovia.
His mother, Jan Brantly, says he had wanted to be a medical missionary from an early age. She says the Indianapolis Heritage Christian High School graduate began going on mission trips while young and has also worked in Uganda and Tanzania.
An Indiana University School of Medicine spokeswoman says Brantly graduated from there in 2009. She says Brantly worked performed humanitarian work while still in medical school, working with impoverished, inner-city residents.
Several other Americans have also been infected, while American resident and Liberian government official Patrick Sawyer recently died of Ebola after arriving in Nigeria.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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