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This 2011 photo provided by Wilmot Chayee shows Thomas Eric Duncan, right, with friend Wilmot Chayee at a wedding in Ghana. Duncan traveled to Dallas in 2014 after contracting Ebola in Liberia.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Wilmot Chayee\/AP<\/p>\n
On May 17, 2026, the World Health Organization declared the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda a Public Health Emergency of International Concern<\/a>. When news like this breaks, it\u2019s hard not to wonder whether this deadly disease could reach us in Dallas. It already has once before.\u00a0<\/p>\n The following account is based on news stories from The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n In September 2014, Thomas Eric Duncan boarded a plane in Monrovia, Liberia, to reunite with family in Dallas and celebrate his son\u2019s high school graduation.<\/p>\n Just a few days earlier, Duncan helped take a pregnant woman to the hospital, where she later died of Ebola. Despite his exposure, Duncan was asymptomatic when he was checked for fever at Monrovia’s airport.\u00a0<\/p>\n Duncan arrived at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport on Sept. 20 and traveled to an apartment in the Vickery Meadow neighborhood to meet his family. Symptoms including fever, abdominal pain and decreased urination began to appear four days later, leading Duncan to visit Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas. He reported severe pain, and doctors ordered tests to rule out appendicitis, stroke and other serious ailments. He was prescribed antibiotics, told to take Tylenol and released.<\/p>\n Make Dallas News a preferred source so your search results prioritize writing by actual people, not AI.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Add Preferred Source<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Over the next few days, Duncan\u2019s symptoms worsened. He returned to Texas Health Presbyterian on Sept. 28, transported by EMS. A doctor noted Duncan had just come from Liberia, where an Ebola epidemic was occurring, and that Duncan needed to be tested for the virus. He was placed in isolation, and federal health officials confirmed on Sept. 30 that he had contracted Ebola.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n With that announcement came some reassurance. There was no risk to anyone who traveled on the same planes as Duncan, since the disease only spreads through contact with bodily fluids of a symptomatic person, and he had no symptoms at the time of the flights. Federal officials also turned down calls for mandatory travel restrictions, saying the chances of an outbreak in the United States remained minimal.<\/p>\n On Oct. 1, Presbyterian Health said the nurse who treated Duncan during his first visit made a note about his recent trip from Liberia, but that information was not shared with the rest of the team. At the time of the first visit, obtaining a patient\u2019s travel history was not part of standard triage protocol. Hospital officials initially said there was a flaw in their electronic health records system that led to separate physician and nurse workflows, meaning Duncan\u2019s travel history was not passed on to physicians, but later retracted this statement and said the error was due to miscommunication.\u00a0<\/p>\n Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, Texas on Friday, Oct. 3, 2014, when Thomas Eric Duncan was in isolation at the hospital.<\/p>\n David Woo<\/p>\n Presbyterian Health announced on Oct. 6 that Duncan had started receiving an experimental treatment and that about 70 hospital staff were working to save him. He died two days later, at the age of 42.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Two of the nurses who treated him, Nina Pham and Amber Joy Vinson, were diagnosed with Ebola within a week of Duncan\u2019s death. They both recovered from the disease in the following weeks.<\/p>\n What to know about the current outbreak<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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