Nina Pham, the nurse who was infected with Ebola was declared free of the virus on Friday (AFP Photo)
An American nurse has been declared cured of Ebola and left the hospital on Friday after contracting the virus while caring for a Liberian patient in Texas.
Pham smiled widely and appeared healthy, wearing a turquoise shirt and dark business suit at a press conference outside the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.
"I feel fortunate and blessed to be standing here today," Pham told reporters, expressing her gratitude for those who prayed for her and cared for her while she was sick.
"I am on my way back to recovery even as I reflect on how many others have not been so fortunate."
Pham was the first US healthcare worker to be infected with Ebola while working inside the United States, after Thomas Eric Duncan was admitted to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas on September 28.
Her colleague, nurse Amber Vinson, also came down with Ebola. She too is clear of the virus but has not yet been released from Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, the hospital said Friday.
Pham, 26, said her thoughts are with her friend, Vinson, and another American doctor, Craig Spencer, who was diagnosed with Ebola in New York on Thursday after returning from Guinea.
She also thanked doctor Kent Brantly, an American missionary who was sickened with Ebola in Liberia over the summer and who donated his plasma to help her recovery.
Pham asked for privacy as she attempts to return to a normal life in Texas.
"Although I no longer have Ebola I know it may be a while before I have my strength back," Pham said.
Pham did not receive any experimental Ebola drugs while at the specialized research hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, said Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
LIBERIAN PATIENTPham's Ebola diagnosis was announced October 12. She was initially hospitalized in Dallas at the hospital where she worked, but was transferred to the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center for treatment on October 16.
Vinson's infection was announced October 15.
Both had extensive contact with Duncan, who traveled from his native Liberia to Texas to visit family last month before he fell ill and died of Ebola on October 8.
Pham and Vinson worked in the intensive care unit, though it remains unknown exactly how they were infected.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said a "breach of protocol" was to blame, and has since issued stricter guidelines for donning protective gear when caring for Ebola patients.
Ebola is spread though close contact with the sweat, vomit, blood or other bodily fluids of an infected person.
Health care workers are at particular risk of contracting Ebola.
Late Thursday, a doctor in New York who had been working in Guinea was found to be infected with Ebola.
He had been traveling from Guinea via Europe, after working with Ebola patients in West Africa for the charity Doctors Without Borders.
A total of nine people with Ebola have been cared for in the United States. Only the Liberian patient has died of the virus here.
More than 4,800 people have died of Ebola so far this year, mainly in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, according to the World Health Organization.
There is no drug on the market to treat Ebola, and no approved vaccine to prevent the often-deadly virus that first emerged in 1976.
The WHO said that Ebola vaccine trials could start in West Africa in December, with hundreds of thousands of doses potentially being rolled out by mid-2015.