--- title: Ebola Doctor and Survivor Recounts His Battle in New Book description: Dr. Kent Brantly and his wife Amber detail the physician's work on Ebola—and his survival of it canonical: https://time.com/3965989/ebola-survivor-brantly-book/ author: Alexandra Sifferlin article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-07-21T19:07:10.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:58:28.907Z article:section: Health og:title: Ebola Doctor and Survivor Recounts His Battle in New Book og:description: Dr. Kent Brantly and his wife Amber detail their Ebola experience og:url: https://time.com/3965989/ebola-survivor-brantly-book/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2e01e43425ac1fa5/69885bc5cd68489a700a0e51/51iwxdf4fkl.jpg?branch=production&width=335&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 335 og:image:height: 188 og:image:alt: 51iWXDF4FKL og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Ebola Doctor and Survivor Recounts His Battle in New Book twitter:description: Dr. Kent Brantly and his wife Amber detail their Ebola experience twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2e01e43425ac1fa5/69885bc5cd68489a700a0e51/51iwxdf4fkl.jpg?branch=production&width=335&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Ebola Doctor Recounts His Battle with the Virus in New Book > 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=3cdf707c-e54a-4c66-bfd7-385e1783818d&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 [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) ## Alexandra Sifferlin Jul 21, 2015 7:07 PM UTC  WaterBrook Press by [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) ## Alexandra Sifferlin Jul 21, 2015 7:07 PM UTC A year after Dr. Kent Brantly captivated the world as the first American with Ebola to be treated in the United States, the medical missionary and his wife Amber have penned a new book, [_Called for Life: How Loving Our Neighbor Led Us Into the Heart of the Ebola Epidemic,_](http://www.calledforlifebook.com/) which chronicles their experiences as two medical missionaries unexpectedly propelled into a devastating outbreak. Among the most captivating—and disturbing sections—are the Brantlys’ retelling of when Ebola first crept into West Africa, and Kent’s detailed description of what it felt like when the virus invaded his body. “I also developed a petechial rash: small red spots from my chest out to my arms,” Kent writes, clinically describing the progression of symptoms. “Their appearance meant blood vessels had broken in those areas. Over the next couple of days, the rash would progress until the spots coalesced into generalized, large red erythematous rash from head to toe.” Though the year of Ebola epidemic news coverage has increased public understanding of the virus, Kent’s narrative reiterates how devastating and serious an Ebola diagnosis was, and still remains. He vividly describes moments of panic when during which he wrapped himself around the ankles of victims’ family member, begging them not to take the contagious bodies of their loved ones home. While the Brantly family—among a handful of other patients—put a face to the outbreak, the couple dedicate a large portion of the book to describe Ebola’s unseen victims. There was Harris the plumber, who tried to help a woman get her Ebola-infected husband to a hospital, only to catch and die from the disease himself. There was Lusu, a mother who watched both her daughters die before she succumbed herself. The Brantlys also recount some of the factors that contributed to the epidemic’s spread, like the dearth of latex gloves in hospitals. Despite the fact that Liberia is one of the largest producers of raw latex, most of it is exported. The Brantlys’ story is also emotional, tacking between Kent and Amber’s recollections of the same events: Kent, in Liberia, unsure he can breathe much longer, while a heartbroken Amber prays in the United States that her husband makes it through the night. Those who followed the Brantly family’s story in real-time will remember how often Kent thanked God for his life during his discharge press conference from Emory University Hospital. The book is written in a similar vein, with plenty of references to Bible versus and prayer. Brantly addresses potential critics head-on, writing that he’s never used his medical position to evangelize, and he explains his own occasional struggles to reconcile God with science: --- > “” --- The Brantly family [recently returned to Liberia](http://www.today.com/health/ebola-survivor-dr-kent-brantly-why-my-family-i-returned-t33476) to visit the country they previously called home. In May Liberia was declared Ebola-free, but by July 1 officials announced the country has new cases of the disease. So far, Ebola has infected over 27,690 people in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea, killing over 11,260. ## 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/3965989/ebola-survivor-brantly-book/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3965989/ebola-survivor-brantly-book/"},"headline":"Ebola Doctor Recounts His Battle with the Virus in New Book","datePublished":"2015-07-21T19:07:10.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:58:28.907Z","description":"Dr. Kent Brantly and his wife Amber detail the physician's work on Ebola—and his survival of it","url":"https://time.com/3965989/ebola-survivor-brantly-book/","keywords":["ebola","Books","Liberia"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2e01e43425ac1fa5/69885bc5cd68489a700a0e51/51iwxdf4fkl.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Alexandra Sifferlin","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2e01e43425ac1fa5/69885bc5cd68489a700a0e51/51iwxdf4fkl.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"51iWXDF4FKL","caption":"","creditText":"WaterBrook Press","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/ebola/","name":"ebola"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3965989/ebola-survivor-brantly-book/","name":"Ebola Doctor Recounts His Battle with the Virus in New Book"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"We're Getting Closer To Stopping Ebola","description":"Trials of a new Ebola vaccine have been successful in preventing the disease.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/urkGLVMg/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2015-07-31T15:49:21.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/urkGLVMg.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/3965989/ebola-survivor-brantly-book/","duration":"PT1M2S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/3965989/ebola-survivor-brantly-book/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola","description":"Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/G194AmTC/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2014-08-13T23:41:12.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/G194AmTC.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/3965989/ebola-survivor-brantly-book/","duration":"PT2M32S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/3965989/ebola-survivor-brantly-book/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```