A doctor who almost died after contracting Ebola is returning to the field as a Christian missionary.
Dr. Kent Brantly was serving with Christian humanitarian relief organization, Samaritan’s Purse, contracted the lethal disease in the summer of 2014 while volunteering in Liberia.
But despite being forced to evacuate back to Atlanta and undergoing emergency treatment at Emory University Hospital, Brantly said he is ready to pick up the stethoscope once again and head out to the mission field.
“It’s been five years of emotional healing and spiritual healing and growth,” the physician told The Christian Chronicle. “I think we’ve grown and been equipped in ways during this five years that we were not before we went to Liberia.”
Brantly noted that he and his wife had been praying and felt that the Lord may be leading them to Zambia, where there is a need for additional doctors.
“We’ve spent time praying and fasting and talking together about it … and God has really opened the doors every step of the way,” Brantly added.
The Ebola epidemic of 2014-2016 claimed over 11,000 lives across West Africa, as quarantine teams struggled to contain its relentless spread. Brantly, however, was blessed to be administered an experimental drug, ZMapp, which drastically aided his recovery.
In a previous interview with Faithwire, Samaritan’s Purse President Franklin Graham recalled crying out to God for Brantly’s life.
“I didn’t even know how to pray. It was a desperate kind of prayer, ‘God why?’” Graham said of the dark time. “Because I knew Dr. Kent Brantly was going to die, and there was nothing I could do. My faith was very thin at that point (and I felt no hope).”
Incredibly, he survived.
“Today is a miraculous day,” Brantly said after being from the hospital on Aug. 21, 2014, following a month of treatment. “I’m thrilled to be alive, to be well and to be reunited with my family. … God saved my life, a direct answer to thousands and thousands of prayers.”
“For the next few years after I recovered, we really tried to use the platform to call for help for the people of West Africa,” Brantly added, “and to share the message with all of society, but particularly with the church, of the importance of choosing compassion over fear.”
Now fully recovered and raring to go, Brantly said he is determined to “live a life that is faithful to the calling he’s given me.”
“Right now, I think that means moving my family to Zambia to serve at a Christian mission hospital,” he said, “to serve the poor and have compassion for the people in need and to participate in God’s work of making all things new and fixing the broken things in this world.”
Brantly implored his supporters to “join his family in prayer” as they “head off on this new journey.”