Thomas Eric Duncan died Wednesday morning in Texas, according to the hospital where he was being treated for Ebola.
Duncan, the first person ever diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, died at 7:51 a.m., according to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas.
“He fought courageously in this battle,” the hospital said in a statement.” Our professionals, the doctors and nurses in the unit, as well as the entire Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas community, are also grieving his passing. We have offered the family our support and condolences at this difficult time.”
​Youngor Jallah, the daughter of Duncan’s girlfriend Louise Troh, could be heard weeping in the background during a phone call on Wednesday morning.
“Youngor is crying right now,” said Aaron Yah, Jallah’s husband. “She cannot talk.”
Family members gathered in Dallas were able to see Duncan on Monday at the hospital via a laptop camera in his hospital room. He was on dialysis and a respirator, according to health officials. Saymendy Lloyd, a family spokesperson, had said that the family was told that Duncan’s liver was improving and his fever was dropping.
Duncan traveled from Liberia to the United States last month. About five days later, he began developing symptoms and sought treatment at the hospital, but he was sent home for reasons that still remain unclear.
He was brought back in an ambulance two days later and placed in isolation. On Sept. 30, he was diagnosed with Ebola. Duncan had remained in critical condition for several days and had recently been given experimental treatment.
“I’m praying for my family to be okay,” Duncan’s 19-year-old son, Eric Karsiah Duncan, said at his mother’s church Tuesday night. “I am praying that my dad makes it out safely….I hope they find a cure.”
Duncan joined a handful of other Ebola patients who have received experimental drugs during the course of the outbreak.Two U.S. missionaries infected this summer while working in West Africa were given doses of another unapproved drug, known as ZMapp, but the limited supplies of that drug were soon exhausted. An experimental medicine from a Canadian company, Tekmira, was given to another American doctor who was flown to Nebraska from West Africa for treatment.
Duncan’s family members have questioned why experimental treatments were not used sooner. “We want him to live,” said Mawhen Jallah, 28, Troh’s daughter, said before he was given this treatment. “So we want the drug the other people used to get saved if they have it.”
Still, it will be difficult to know how much of a role the experimental drug ultimately played, said Thomas Geisbert, a professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston who has researched the Ebola virus for decades. Because Duncan was only given the drug so long after falling ill, it is unclear whether it could have helped.
“It may have been given so late that it doesn’t make a difference either way,” Geisbert said Monday.
Duncan had told his fiancee the day he was diagnosed that he regretted exposing her to the virus, saying that he never would have come to the United States if he knew he was infected.
“He apologized to Louise the day they told him what he had,” Lloyd said Tuesday. “He told her, ‘I’m so sorry all of this is happening. . . . I would not put the love of my life in danger.’ ”
Authorities who had spent time with Duncan’s relatives offered their condolences on Wednesday morning.
“My thoughts are with the family and friends of Thomas Eric Duncan at this time, especially his fiancée Louise, their son Karsiah and all those who loved him,” Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said in a statement Wednesday. “We are also thinking of the dedicated hospital staff who assisted Mr. Duncan daily while he fought this terrible disease. We offer prayers of comfort and peace to everyone impacted by his passing.”
State and local health officials, who continue to monitor dozens of people who had contact with Duncan for Ebola symptoms, also sent out messages aimed at the family:
“The past week has been an enormous test of our health system, but for one family it has been far more personal,” David Lakey, commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services, said in a statement. “Today they lost a dear member of their family. They have our sincere condolences, and we are keeping them in our thoughts.” The department vowed to continue fighting to contain the spread of Ebola in Texas. While authorities said about 10 people remain at high risk due to contact with Duncan, including relatives who have been isolated, no one else has shown any symptom of the disease so far.