--- title: Ebola Survivor Nancy Writebol of SIM USA Speaks Out description: Nancy Writebol recovered from Ebola after being infected in Liberia canonical: https://time.com/3264225/ebola-survivor-nancy-writebol/ author: Alexandra Sifferlin article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-09-03T16:09:19.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:00:47.085Z article:section: Health og:title: Ebola Survivor Nancy Writebol of SIM USA Speaks Out og:description: Nancy Writebol recovered from Ebola after being infected in Liberia og:url: https://time.com/3264225/ebola-survivor-nancy-writebol/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt19b80017c86182d7/6986a1cc1eebf71bb83727ca/nancy-whitbol-ebola-husband.jpg?branch=production&width=620&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 620 og:image:height: 349 og:image:alt: From left: SIM missionary Nancy Writebol and her husband David in an undisclosed location on Aug. 20, 2014. og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Ebola Survivor Nancy Writebol of SIM USA Speaks Out twitter:description: Nancy Writebol recovered from Ebola after being infected in Liberia twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt19b80017c86182d7/6986a1cc1eebf71bb83727ca/nancy-whitbol-ebola-husband.jpg?branch=production&width=620&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # American Ebola Survivor Recalls the Fear of Not Knowing If She'd Get Home > Sponsored content. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=1bd6a303-8584-4fe3-a3c8-a8f64638e86e&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola [Watch (HLS stream): Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/G194AmTC.m3u8) (2:32)  _Published 2014-08-13. Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola_ by [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) ## Alexandra Sifferlin Sep 3, 2014 4:09 PM UTC  From left: SIM missionary Nancy Writebol and her husband David in an undisclosed location on Aug. 20, 2014. From left: SIM missionary Nancy Writebol and her husband David in an undisclosed location on Aug. 20, 2014. Reuters by [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) ## Alexandra Sifferlin Sep 3, 2014 4:09 PM UTC An American health care worker who recovered from Ebola recounted Wednesday the ordeal of not knowing whether she would survive the trip back to the U.S. after being infected in Liberia. Nancy Writebol, one of the health care workers who was successfully treated at Emory University Hospital, recalled during a news conference that, as she was flying from Liberia back home, a doctor on the flight approached her in his protective gear, held her face, and said: “Nancy you’re going home, and we will take very good care of you.” “I watched as people were by themselves, not able to have a family member near them, not being able to feel the touch of another person,” Writebol said of her time battling the Ebola outbreak that has now killed more than 1,500 people in West Africa. Another doctor from the aid group for which Writebol worked, SIM USA, was also infected, the group’s director acknowledged Wednesday, identifying the patient as Dr. Rick Sacra, 51, of Massachusetts. Sacra was the medical director for a hospital in Liberia, and had gone to the country after Writebol and Dr. Kent Brantly, another infected American who recovered, were evacuated. SIM USA said it’s focused on Sacra’s treatment in Liberia and didn’t say whether he will also be brought back to the U.S. When asked what healed her, Writebol—whose husband stood by her side—credited a combination of her treatment in both Liberia and the U.S., the experimental drug ZMapp, and her faith. ## Transcript This Ebola outbreak is unprecedented. This is definitely a marathon and not a sprint. The bugs have evolved. The outbreak has gotten bigger. We are only as strong as the weakest link, and we have learned from Ebola that West Africa was a very weak link. [ MUSIC ] There's small clinics, these are like one room places where sick people might go in their house with maybe an auxiliary nurse as some one who has a little bit of medical training, but defiantly not the same standards that we would have here in the US. We're facing 3 main threats. The first is the threat of new organisms. It was coming and spreading in different places. The second is drug- resistant bacteria, and the third are intentionally created organisms. What we do in an outbreak response is continuously see how can we make it better. The exercises we've gone through both, re- evaluating our own protocols but also understanding what the public and governmental responses are has really helped us understand. How to take care of these patients in the larger context of our healthcare systems. And, those who are in the building, I would urge you to come down to either the ops team room, or the, When designing a unit that is designed to accept patients with serious communicable diseases, like Ebola, there are ways to design a unit so that it's function. Functional. Any hospital that can isolate a patient in a single patient room with a bathroom and can follow our infection control recommendations is capable of safely caring for a patient with Ebola. And we've tried to encourage every single hospital in the country to have an antibiotic stewardship program to improve antibiotic prescribing practices. There is a concern about fatigue as we go on that, the CDC other groups have sort of ramping up now to try to surge resources into the area. What we're also realizing is, we need to be able to maintain that surge for many months to keep the pressure on to completely control the outbreak. Time will tell in the next few weeks if we can start to see those numbers going in the right direction. Fewer new cases each day or each week. The single most important thing to understand about protecting Americans from Ebola is that can best be done by stopping it at the source in Africa. 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