Prior to the discovery of the first Ebola case on US soil and the first transmission of the disease in a US hospital, many of us watched the worsening situation in West Africa and felt reassured by the notion that the US would be spared a full blown outbreak thanks to the strength of our well-funded healthcare system.
While that has shown itself to be mostly true so far with only a few cases emerging outside of West Africa — as Shep Smith is happy to note — alleged errors and lapses in communication have posed a challenge to US efforts.
The second Dallas health care worker who was found to have the Ebola virus should not have boarded a commercial jet Monday, health officials say.
Because she had helped care for Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan, and because another health worker who cared for Duncan had been diagnosed with Ebola, the worker was not allowed to travel on a commercial plane with other people, said Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The worker had a temperature of 99.5 Fahrenheit (37.5 Celsius) before she boarded her flight, he added.
Health care workers who had been exposed to Duncan were undergoing self-monitoring. They were allowed to travel but not on a commercial plane with other people, Frieden said.Moving forward, the CDC will ensure that no one else in such a situation travels outside of a closed environment, he said.
Obviously, with the press fixating on the spread of the disease and on the policies being put in place to contain it here and abroad, the “self-monitoring” protocols are going to come under scrutiny. Can these people temporarily be put on a no-fly list? Should their be fines or other consequences if they break protocol? These are questions that may be asked in the coming days since Ebola isn’t likely going to disappear overnight.
In addition to questions about “self-monitoring”, there are some that are questioning the ability of Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital to care for patients with Ebola after the initial Duncan gaffe and the transmission of the disease to two nurses who treated Duncan.
An official close to the situation says that in hindsight, Duncan should have been transferred immediately to either Emory University Hospital in Atlanta or Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.
Those hospitals are among only four in the country that have bio-containment units and have been preparing for years to treat a highly infectious disease like Ebola.
“If we knew then what we know now about this hospital’s ability to safely care for these patients, then we would have transferred him to Emory or Nebraska,” the official told CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen.
According to CNN, one patient from Dallas will be flown to Emory Hospital.
In addition to those comments by officials, National Nurses United has voiced their concern about conditions at the hospital.
News of the second nurse’s diagnosis follows criticism of the hospital’s nurses of its initial handling of the diseases, in a statement Tuesday by National Nurses United, which is both a union and a professional association for U.S. nurses.
The nurses said the hospital lacked protocols to deal with an Ebola patient, offered no advance training and provided them with insufficient gear, including non-impermeable gowns, gloves with no taping around wrists and suits that left their necks exposed.
Basic principles of infection control were violated by both the hospital’s Infectious Disease Department and CDC officials, the nurses said, with no one picking up hazardous waste “as it piled to the ceiling.”
“The nurses strongly feel unsupported, unprepared, lied to, and deserted to handle the situation on their own,” the statement said.
The hospital said in a statement it had instituted measures to create a safe working environment and it was reviewing and responding to the nurses’ criticisms.
Again, our healthcare system is well funded and our ability to handle infectious diseases is enviable, but we are clearly not impenetrable and some of these statements and developments are troubling. Hopefully, officials can learn from any mistakes that have been made to plug the holes and beat back this disease before we stop being shocked by every new case.