SIM 'Ebola Fighter' Doctors among TIME Magazine's 'Person of the Year' for 2014; Available for Comment/Interview

CHARLOTTE, N.C., Dec. 11, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Dr. Jerry Brown, a physician with the Christian mission agency SIM, was featured on the cover of "TIME" magazine this week as it named "The Ebola Fighters" its 2014 "Person of the Year" (http://time.com/time-person-of-the-year-ebola-fighters-choice).  Brown, along with SIM colleagues Dr. Debbie Eisenhut, Dr. John Fankhauser, Nancy Writebol and Dr. Rick Sacra, are available to speak on SIM's work at its ELWA Hospital in Monrovia and a variety of topics related to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

• Brown, a Liberian national, is medical director at ELWA.  He became concerned about an Ebola outbreak early on and prepared the hospital to receive infected patients before the virus spread to the nation's capital. He converted the hospital's chapel into an Ebola treatment facility, the only one in Liberia for more than a month, built a larger, second Ebola unit and treated those infected with the deadly virus.
  
• Eisenhut, from Portland, Ore., worked as a surgeon at ELWA.  As part of the SIM medical team, she helped research Ebola, devised methods to treat patients and designed best–protection practices for healthcare workers.    
  
• Fankhauser, of Ventura, Calif., was practicing family medicine at ELWA. Since the outbreak, he has served three medical tours in the country, treating many Ebola patients, including Writebol and Dr. Kent Brantly of Samaritan's Purse. Fankhauser returned to Liberia when Sacra was diagnosed with Ebola, caring for him and assuming his duties when he was flown to the U.S. for treatment.  He has been through quarantine twice.
  
• Nancy Writebol, an SIM worker from Charlotte, N.C., contracted Ebola while helping disinfect medical personnel during the outbreak. She gained international attention when she was flown to the U.S. for treatment at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, where she completely recovered from Ebola.
  
• Sacra, of Holden, Mass., served as acting medical director at ELWA from 2008 to 2010. In early August he returned to ELWA to provide support when SIM relocated its missionaries back to the U.S.  After contracting Ebola while serving at the hospital, Sacra was flown to The University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, where he successfully underwent treatment.  

SIM's ELWA Hospital in Monrovia became a model for other hospitals in West Africa during the Ebola crisis, developing treatment facilities, screening processes and offering other critical care medical services – emergency surgery, maternity, malaria and HIV treatment, pediatrics – when other facilities were shutting down.

Those interested in learning the most current information about the medical response team at ELWA Hospital in Monrovia should visit www.helpebola.org.

SIM (www.simusa.org) is an international Christian mission organization with a staff of nearly 3,000 workers from 70 nationalities serving in more than 65 countries. In addition to medicine, SIM serves on every continent in areas of education, community development, public health and Christian witness. While SIM stood for Sudan Interior Mission when it was founded 120 years ago, it is now a global mission known as SIM (pronounced S-I-M).

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SOURCE SIM

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