--- title: Ebola Survivors' Blood: WHO Says To Treat Patients With It description: The World Health Organization recommended the use of Ebola survivors' blood to treat those suffering from the deadly disease Friday. canonical: https://time.com/3275671/who-ebola-survivors-blood/ author: Justin Worland article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-09-05T21:36:53.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-01T09:01:32.235Z article:section: Health og:title: Ebola Survivors' Blood: WHO Says To Treat Patients With It og:description: The World Health Organization recommended the use of Ebola survivors' blood to treat those suffering from the deadly disease Friday. og:url: https://time.com/3275671/who-ebola-survivors-blood/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte4f72e69495893d0/6986a064d0b6f29316305c83/kent-brantly-ebola2.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2400 og:image:height: 1350 og:image:alt: Dr. Kent Brantly an Ebola patient at Emory Hospital, stands with his wife, Amber Brantly, during a press conference announcing his release from the hospital on August 21, 2014 in Atlanta. og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Ebola Survivors' Blood: WHO Says To Treat Patients With It twitter:description: The World Health Organization recommended the use of Ebola survivors' blood to treat those suffering from the deadly disease Friday. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte4f72e69495893d0/6986a064d0b6f29316305c83/kent-brantly-ebola2.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Officials Urge Use of Ebola Survivors' Blood to Treat Patients > Sponsored content. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's weekday health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free weekday newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=e4401570-3923-4de7-a588-fd4e9d2003bc&cr=time-nl-health-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 [Justin Worland](https://time.com/author/justin-worland/)  ## Justin Worland Senior Correspondent Sep 5, 2014 9:36 PM UTC  by [Justin Worland](https://time.com/author/justin-worland/)  ## Justin Worland Senior Correspondent Sep 5, 2014 9:36 PM UTC Health officials on Friday [recommended](http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ebola-ravages-health-care-sierra-leone-capital) the use of [Ebola](http://topics.time.com/ebola/) survivors’ blood to treat those suffering from an outbreak of the deadly disease in West Africa. “We have to change the sense that there is no hope,” Marie-Paule Kieny, an assistant director-general of the World Health Organization, said during a conference of health experts, the Associated Press reports. The use of blood was one method on a long list of experimental treatments suggested at the conference. RNA-based treatments and pre-existing drugs designed for other diseases were among the other potential options. The experts stressed the need for rigorous data-keeping and evaluation to determine the efficacy of each potential solution. [Kent Brantly](http://time.com/3270016/ebola-survivor-kent-brantly/), an American doctor who survived an Ebola infection, was given blood from another Ebola survivor during his infection. He also received ZMapp, a vaccine that has been developed to address the disease. Experts said it will take time to produce more ZMapp and another promising vaccine that could stem the spread of Ebola, which has already killed more than 2,000 people in West Africa. The Obama Administration has asked Congress to provide funds to accelerate the development of ZMapp. ## 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. Its normal to be scared of something as deadly as Ebola and for the general public I really hope we can never let our fear undermine our compassion. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3275671/who-ebola-survivors-blood/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3275671/who-ebola-survivors-blood/"},"headline":"Officials Urge Use of Ebola Survivors' Blood to Treat Patients","datePublished":"2014-09-05T21:36:53.000Z","dateModified":"2026-10-01T09:01:32.235Z","description":"Amid outbreak that has killed more than 2,000","url":"https://time.com/3275671/who-ebola-survivors-blood/","keywords":["Infectious Disease","medicine","Disease","WHO","ebola","blood"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte4f72e69495893d0/6986a064d0b6f29316305c83/kent-brantly-ebola2.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Justin Worland","jobTitle":"Senior Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/justin-worland/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte4f72e69495893d0/6986a064d0b6f29316305c83/kent-brantly-ebola2.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Dr. Kent Brantly an Ebola patient at Emory Hospital, stands with his wife, Amber Brantly, during a press conference announcing his release from the hospital on August 21, 2014 in Atlanta.","caption":"Dr. Kent Brantly an Ebola patient at Emory Hospital, stands with his wife, Amber Brantly, during a press conference announcing his release from the hospital on August 21, 2014 in Atlanta.","creditText":"Jessica McGowan—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/infectious-disease/","name":"Infectious Disease"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3275671/who-ebola-survivors-blood/","name":"Officials Urge Use of Ebola Survivors' Blood to Treat Patients"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"WHO Recommends Using Ebola Survivors' Blood To Treat Others","description":"The World Health Organization has approved blood transfusions from Ebola survivors as a possible treatment for the disease. 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