http://nypost.com/2014/11/12/family-of-first-us-ebola-victim-reaches-resolution-with-hospital/Family of first US Ebola victim reaches ‘resolution’ with hospital
By Yaron Steinbuch
November 12, 2014 | 9:03am
The family of Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian man who died of Ebola in Dallas, has reached a “resolution” with the hospital that treated him, according to reports.
Duncan’s relatives will appear at a news conference Wednesday “regarding a resolution they have reached on behalf of the children and parents of the deceased with Texas Health Resources and all related entities,” according to a release from the Miller Weisbrod law firm, WFAA reported.
Texas Health Resources, which operates Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, is expected to announce details of the agreement.
Duncan arrived in Texas from Liberia on Sept. 20 and sought medical care at the hospital five days later. He was at the hospital, with a temperature of 103 degrees, for five hours before being sent home despite telling health care workers he had been in West Africa, where the disease was rampant in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.
He returned to the hospital Sept. 28 and became the first person to be diagnosed with the deadly disease in the US. He died Oct. 8.
Two nurses who treated Duncan at the hospital, Nina Pham and Amber Vinson, caught the disease and subsequently recovered.
Duncan’s family has questioned the care he received and why the poor and uninsured man did not get all the help they wanted.
“We asked. We begged. We pleaded. I even offered my own blood, even though it wouldn’t do anything for him,” said nephew Josephus Weeks, according to the Associated Press. “We requested everything we could think of to save Eric. They said no.”
Hospital spokesman Wendell Watson has said “many treatment options” were considered, including experimental drugs and a transfusion, the AP reported.
He said treatments to save Duncan were “discussed daily” with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Emory University in Atlanta, which successfully treated other Ebola patients.
