--- title: Watch American Ebola Survivors Describe Fighting the Deadly Virus description: Dr. Kent Brantly, Nina Pham, and other American Ebola health workers describe what it was like to have — and survive — Ebola canonical: https://time.com/3629805/us-ebola-survivors-video/ author: Diane Tsai article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-12-11T16:53:02.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T02:46:32.118Z article:section: Health og:title: Watch American Ebola Survivors Describe Fighting the Deadly Virus og:description: Dr. Kent Brantly, Nina Pham, and other American Ebola health workers describe what it was like to have — and survive — Ebola og:url: https://time.com/3629805/us-ebola-survivors-video/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf99615617d217de4/69876e3e3c1639270e450972/brantly_samaritanspurse.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Dr. Kent Brantly in LIberia og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Watch American Ebola Survivors Describe Fighting the Deadly Virus twitter:description: Dr. Kent Brantly, Nina Pham, and other American Ebola health workers describe what it was like to have — and survive — Ebola twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf99615617d217de4/69876e3e3c1639270e450972/brantly_samaritanspurse.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Watch U.S. Ebola Survivors Describe Fighting the Deadly Virus  by [Diane Tsai](https://time.com/author/diane-tsai/)  ## Diane Tsai Dec 11, 2014 4:53 PM UTC  Courtesy of Samaritan's Purse  by [Diane Tsai](https://time.com/author/diane-tsai/)  ## Diane Tsai Dec 11, 2014 4:53 PM UTC Dr. Kent Brantly vividly remembers the day he was told he had Ebola. A missionary doctor with Samaritan’s Purse in Liberia, Brantly had been treating Ebola patients and was familiar with the deadliness of the disease. And yet, he didn’t panic when a colleague broke the news. “It was really a very surreal moment. It was a very solemn moment,” Brantly says. “I felt a very strange but overwhelming sense of peace.” For Dallas nurse Nina Pham, who had cared for Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan at Texas Health Presbyterian in Dallas, learning that she tested positive for Ebola was devastating news. “Because Mr. Duncan had died three days prior, flashbacks started coming to my head of how his disease progressed and eventually led to his death,” Pham says. In the video above, Brantly and Pham, along with nurse Amber Vinson, Dr. Rick Sacra and medical aide Nancy Writebol — all of whom have survived Ebola — recount their experiences. _TIME named Ebola Fighters as the 2014 Person of the Year. Read the full story_ [_here_](http://time.com/time-person-of-the-year-ebola-fighters/)_._ ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3629805/us-ebola-survivors-video/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3629805/us-ebola-survivors-video/"},"headline":"Watch U.S. Ebola Survivors Describe Fighting the Deadly Virus","datePublished":"2014-12-11T16:53:02.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T02:46:32.118Z","description":"\"I saw his eyes and they had been red from crying, and I knew immediately\"","url":"https://time.com/3629805/us-ebola-survivors-video/","keywords":["Person of the Year topic","ebola","nina pham"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf99615617d217de4/69876e3e3c1639270e450972/brantly_samaritanspurse.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Diane Tsai","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/diane-tsai/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf99615617d217de4/69876e3e3c1639270e450972/brantly_samaritanspurse.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Dr. Kent Brantly in LIberia","caption":"","creditText":"Courtesy of Samaritan's Purse","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/person-of-the-year-2/","name":"Person of the Year topic"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3629805/us-ebola-survivors-video/","name":"Watch U.S. Ebola Survivors Describe Fighting the Deadly Virus"}}]}] ```