Ebola leaves survivors with debilitating reminders like blindness, epilepsy

[Gert van der Hoek]

oct 14, 2016

Ebola no longer dominates the headlines but for an estimated 17,000 survivors of the largest Ebola outbreak in history, the struggle is not over. Many who survived the West African outbreak that sickened nearly 30,000 people between 2014 and 2016 are living with a constellation of long-term symptoms known as post-Ebola syndrome.

Some of those Ebola survivors are right here in Texas. A Fort Worth doctor fell sick with Ebola while working in Liberia and two nurses became infected in Dallas while caring for the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the U.S.

One of those nurses, Nina Pham, 28, is suing her then-employer, Texas Health Presbyterian Dallas, and its parent company, Texas Health Resources. Pham says the hospital failed to protect its staff from the Ebola virus. Her case may go to trial as early as next week.

In an exclusive interview with The Dallas Morning News last year, Pham said she suffered hair loss, physical pain, insomnia and nightmares since recovering from Ebola. Doctors who cared for her at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. told Pham that some of those symptoms could be a result of the infection.

So far, researchers have discovered that approximately 1 in 10 survivors suffer an eye disease called uveitis, which is swelling of the middle layer of tissue in the eye wall. That's compared to 1 in 100 of the controls. Left untreated, uveitis can cause scarring, cataracts, glaucoma and blindness. More than a quarter of those who have uveitis have reduced vision, said Bishop.

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