Nyani Ngabu
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Second US Patient Tests Positive for Ebola
Second US Patient Tests Positive for Ebola
- Thread starter BAK
- Start date
Janjaweed
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facts zipo online, you dont need Janjaweed to give you, CIA wameweka, CDC wameweka sasa unataka nini?? we tend to dwell on speculation kutwa kucha
TUnapenda sana kuwekewa kila kitu mezani
Ufamba na ushamba ni vitu vibaya sana
Nyani Ngabu
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kui
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No word yet,about their race
BAK
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Suspected Ebola case being tested at Beth Israel hospital
Photo by:
Jim Michaud
A man is isolated in the back of an ambulance at Harvard Vanguard Medical Center in Braintree Sunday afternoon for precautionary measures, officials said the man complained of medical issues and had recently traveled to West Africa. After more than an hour the victim was transported to an area hospital.
Sunday, October 12, 2014
97 Comments
By:
Jack Encarnacao, Laurel J. Sweet
A man claiming to have recently traveled to Liberia in West Africa who turned up at the Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates urgent-care offices in Braintree this afternoon complaining of a headache, muscle aches and other Ebola-like symptoms was quarantined and has been brought to one of Boston's top hospitals under police escort.
"Out of an abundance of caution we immediately notified authorities and the patient was securely removed from the building and put into an ambulance now headed to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. The building was closed briefly but has now re-opened. We are working closely with the Department of Public Health who will determine next steps," said Dr. Ben Kruskal, chief of infectious disease for Harvard Vanguard.
Dr. Ken Sands, senior vice president of quality at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, said the man was being tested in accordance with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state Department of Public Health standards.
The patient will be placed in isolation - "so there is a barrier between the patient's room and the rest of the institution," Sands said. The ventilation system will be protected and medical staff will wear "protective gear that they were trained to wear."
He declined to identify the man who was transported from Braintree to the hospital shortly before 4 p.m. The driver of the Brewster Ambulance was seen wearing a hazmat suit and face mask. A second person was later brought out on a stretcher in a hazmat suit and placed in a second ambulance.
Bystander Susan Marini of Quincy said her husband Lareto - who is not the suspected Ebola case - came to Harvard Vanguard seeking treatment of a sore throat shortly before the emergency response began. He has since been allowed to leave, wearing a face mask.
"They just told him this is going to be a long process, be prepared," said Marini, who'd run into a nearby Kmart to get him a drink, only to find the clinic swarmed by emergency responders when she returned.
"I was gone about 10 minutes," Marini said, adding a police officer told her, "There's an Ebola scare. Nobody can go in."
"He's scared, but he's OK," she said of her husband.
Department of Public Health spokeswoman Anne Roach, when asked about the Braintree case, told the Herald, "There are no cases of Ebola in Massachusetts," while adding, "DPH is only reporting on confirmed cases."
Roach said, "DPH has worked closely with area hospitals on possible cases of Ebola and they've all been quickly ruled out."
Sands said once the man undergoes initial testing, if it is deemed a suspected Ebola case the patient's medical information could be sent to the CDC for further testing that could take up to 48 hours before results are known.
Jim Michaud
A man is isolated in the back of an ambulance at Harvard Vanguard Medical Center in Braintree Sunday afternoon for precautionary measures, officials said the man complained of medical issues and had recently traveled to West Africa. After more than an hour the victim was transported to an area hospital.
Sunday, October 12, 2014
97 Comments
By:
Jack Encarnacao, Laurel J. Sweet
A man claiming to have recently traveled to Liberia in West Africa who turned up at the Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates urgent-care offices in Braintree this afternoon complaining of a headache, muscle aches and other Ebola-like symptoms was quarantined and has been brought to one of Boston's top hospitals under police escort.
"Out of an abundance of caution we immediately notified authorities and the patient was securely removed from the building and put into an ambulance now headed to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. The building was closed briefly but has now re-opened. We are working closely with the Department of Public Health who will determine next steps," said Dr. Ben Kruskal, chief of infectious disease for Harvard Vanguard.
Dr. Ken Sands, senior vice president of quality at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, said the man was being tested in accordance with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state Department of Public Health standards.
The patient will be placed in isolation - "so there is a barrier between the patient's room and the rest of the institution," Sands said. The ventilation system will be protected and medical staff will wear "protective gear that they were trained to wear."
He declined to identify the man who was transported from Braintree to the hospital shortly before 4 p.m. The driver of the Brewster Ambulance was seen wearing a hazmat suit and face mask. A second person was later brought out on a stretcher in a hazmat suit and placed in a second ambulance.
Bystander Susan Marini of Quincy said her husband Lareto - who is not the suspected Ebola case - came to Harvard Vanguard seeking treatment of a sore throat shortly before the emergency response began. He has since been allowed to leave, wearing a face mask.
"They just told him this is going to be a long process, be prepared," said Marini, who'd run into a nearby Kmart to get him a drink, only to find the clinic swarmed by emergency responders when she returned.
"I was gone about 10 minutes," Marini said, adding a police officer told her, "There's an Ebola scare. Nobody can go in."
"He's scared, but he's OK," she said of her husband.
Department of Public Health spokeswoman Anne Roach, when asked about the Braintree case, told the Herald, "There are no cases of Ebola in Massachusetts," while adding, "DPH is only reporting on confirmed cases."
Roach said, "DPH has worked closely with area hospitals on possible cases of Ebola and they've all been quickly ruled out."
Sands said once the man undergoes initial testing, if it is deemed a suspected Ebola case the patient's medical information could be sent to the CDC for further testing that could take up to 48 hours before results are known.
Nyani Ngabu
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BAK
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Updated October 8, 2014
It seems so obvious: To keep Ebola out of the United States, simply keep anyone who has the deadly disease from getting in.
Some prominent Obama administration critics have made that argument this week, calling for a travel ban into the U.S. from the West African nations of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea, where more than 3,400 have died of the virus and thousands more are infected. There's a growing social media chorus calling for a ban, too. (Related: As Ebola's Spread Continues, Key Questions and Answers)
By cutting off travel from the Ebola zone, the thinking goes, someone like Thomas Duncan-the Liberian diagnosed with Ebola in Dallas last week and died Wednesday morning in a Dallas hospital-would never have made it into the United States. Ebola is not detectable (or contagious) until the patient develops symptoms such as fever and vomiting, so Duncan's illness could not have been diagnosed until after he arrived in the U.S.
The U.S. government does appear ready to increase screening of air passengers arriving in the United States from several West African nations by taking their temperatures, a federal official told CNN on Wednesday. And yet the Obama administration has steadfastly rejected the idea of an outright ban on travel to and from West Africa.
See graphic:
Ebola: Tracking the Outbreak
Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been asked repeatedly about a travel ban in near-daily briefings with the press over the past week. Each time, he has insisted it won't work.
Frieden, who is heading the government's Ebola response, has gone as far as to say that a travel ban could hurt Americans in the long run, by limiting the ability of relief workers and supplies to get into West Africa's Ebola zone.
"Until the disease is controlled in Africa, we can't get the disease to zero here," Frieden said at a Tuesday news conference. (Related: "Every Newly Emerging Disease Like Ebola Begins With a Mystery.")
Public health experts generally back the administration's actions, and most oppose a travel ban, at least for the moment. But they say the issue is more nuanced than Frieden has made it out to be. A travel ban would have kept Duncan from bringing Ebola to the U.S., they say, and could keep out some future infected travelers.
"It is a question, I think, on which people can honestly disagree," said Stephen S. Morse, professor of epidemiology at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. "There are good arguments to be made on both sides. It's partly a philosophical choice."
Politics and Perception
Six African countries have already banned or suspended flights from Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone, and others have instituted other travel restrictions. (Related: "Doctors and Nurses Risk Everything to Fight Ebola in West Africa.")
And since late August, the U.S. State Department has urged Americans to avoid all non-essential travel to Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea.
But Congressman Alan Grayson, a Florida Democrat, wants the U.S government to go further. Grayson said he would propose legislation calling for a ban if the administration continues to avoid one.
"It will prevent infected travelers in whom Ebola is asymptomatic and undetectable from traveling to the United States and then exposing Americans to the disease after they become symptomatic," he said by e-mail.
It takes anywhere from 2 to 21 days for someone who has been exposed to the Ebola virus to show symptoms. People who are not symptomatic are not contagious, and Duncan did not have symptoms while he was traveling and so could not pass the virus on to fellow passengers. No one who came into contact with Duncan has yet become ill, though several family members and contacts are under observation until the 21 days have elapsed.
A number of high-profile Republican politicians, including Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, have said that more needs to be done to keep Ebola victims from arriving on U.S. soil. But they've stopped short of demanding a full ban.
Wendy Parmet, director of the Program on Health Policy and Law at Northeastern University School of Law, in Boston, said that travel bans are appealing because they make people feel safe. But she argued that safety could be an illusion.
"It gives us the false assurance that we can ignore the problems that are happening in Africa," she said. "At the end of the day, we can't. And our own safety depends on our getting it right there, not on building the walls."
Turkish medics in hazmat gear move a patient suspected of being infected with the Ebola virus. After traveling from Ivory Coast to Turkey in late September, the patient is being transferred to a hospital in Istanbul.
Photograph by Berk Ozkan, Anadolu Agency, Getty Images
Would a Ban Matter?
Many public health experts who oppose the travel ban argue that it's simply not practical. That includes Columbia University's Morse, who describes himself as a "fence-sitter" on the issue but doesn't support a travel ban right now because people with financial means can travel to an intermediate country before entering the United States. West Africa's many porous borders make such travel even easier, he said.
It wouldn't make sense to ban people who fly out of Senegal-where, like the United States, there has been only one case of Ebola, Morse said. But if one person with Ebola made it there, others could, too.
A ban could also encourage people to lie about where they have been, Morse said: "One of the real concerns is that if you outlaw [travel], it will discourage people from coming forth with the truth."
Frieden, for his part, has focused his opposition to a travel ban on the hardship it would present for fighting the epidemic in Africa.
"If we do something that impedes our ability to stop the outbreak in West Africa, it could spread further there," he said Tuesday.
On Sunday, Frieden also cited the example of Senegal, which has restricted flights from the affected countries. The restrictions delayed the arrival of investigators looking for people who had come into contact with the country's one Ebola patient.
Plus, international volunteers who go into West Africa to help treat Ebola patients need to know that they can get back out, Frieden said.
At SIM, an international mission that has led Ebola treatment centers and seen two of its American missionaries recover from the virus, travel restrictions might make volunteers think twice, said George Salloum, who leads the agency's Ebola crisis response team.
"Anything you do to restrict movement of people back and forth or keeping them from getting back to work, it could have an impact on the flow of people willing to serve overseas," he said.
Screening at Airports-and Beyond
Those on both sides of the travel ban debate appear to support aggressive airport screening, to ensure that sick people won't be able to get on a plane and potentially infect fellow passengers.
President Obama on Monday announced plans to step up airport screening in the United States and in West Africa, evaluating travelers for signs of illness, better informing airport personnel on how to spot Ebola, and handing out fact sheets to incoming passengers from affected countries.
He did not reveal specifics about what he would change and did not mention a travel ban.
Frieden said Tuesday that he would announce more details in a few days. Among measures being considered, he said, are temperature checks and questionnaires given to passengers arriving in the United States. On Wednesday morning, CNN reported that temperature checks will begin this weekend or next week on passengers whose travel itineraries include the affected West African nations.
Frieden said that 77 people have been blocked from leaving the affected countries since this summer, when officials began questioning travelers and screening their temperatures at airports in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. None of them tested positive for Ebola, he said, adding that they most likely had malaria, a mosquito-borne disease that shares early symptoms with Ebola.
A temperature check could have stopped Patrick Sawyer, a Liberian-born American citizen who flew from Liberia to Nigeria in late July while sick with Ebola, from spreading the disease.
Sawyer directly or indirectly infected 20 people in Nigeria, eight of whom died, as did Sawyer himself. It's unclear whether he knew he had Ebola when he left Liberia. A travel ban likely would not have stopped Sawyer from entering because he was a U.S. citizen, though an effective temperature scan would have.
Still, airport screening is hardly foolproof. Duncan may have lied when answering questions about whether he had been exposed to anyone with Ebola. Or he may not have realized that helping a pregnant neighbor to the hospital in Liberia exposed him to the virus, Frieden said.
Beyond airports, hospitals are an important second line of defense against Ebola, said Jill Holdsworth, an infection control practitioner at Inova Mount Vernon Hospital in Alexandria, Virginia.
Duncan's symptoms were missed as Ebola the first time he went to Texas Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, although he apparently indicated that he had recently arrived from Liberia. Several hospital workers and the ambulance drivers who took Duncan back to Texas Presbyterian two days later may have been exposed because of that mistake.
"As soon as a patient walks in, if they present with a fever, you should ask them about recent travel history," said Holdsworth, who is also a spokesperson for the 15,000-member Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology. "If they say yes, they immediately get taken to a room until we can figure out what's going on. That's what every hospital has to be doing."
It seems so obvious: To keep Ebola out of the United States, simply keep anyone who has the deadly disease from getting in.
Some prominent Obama administration critics have made that argument this week, calling for a travel ban into the U.S. from the West African nations of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea, where more than 3,400 have died of the virus and thousands more are infected. There's a growing social media chorus calling for a ban, too. (Related: As Ebola's Spread Continues, Key Questions and Answers)
By cutting off travel from the Ebola zone, the thinking goes, someone like Thomas Duncan-the Liberian diagnosed with Ebola in Dallas last week and died Wednesday morning in a Dallas hospital-would never have made it into the United States. Ebola is not detectable (or contagious) until the patient develops symptoms such as fever and vomiting, so Duncan's illness could not have been diagnosed until after he arrived in the U.S.
The U.S. government does appear ready to increase screening of air passengers arriving in the United States from several West African nations by taking their temperatures, a federal official told CNN on Wednesday. And yet the Obama administration has steadfastly rejected the idea of an outright ban on travel to and from West Africa.
See graphic:Ebola: Tracking the Outbreak
Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been asked repeatedly about a travel ban in near-daily briefings with the press over the past week. Each time, he has insisted it won't work.
Frieden, who is heading the government's Ebola response, has gone as far as to say that a travel ban could hurt Americans in the long run, by limiting the ability of relief workers and supplies to get into West Africa's Ebola zone.
"Until the disease is controlled in Africa, we can't get the disease to zero here," Frieden said at a Tuesday news conference. (Related: "Every Newly Emerging Disease Like Ebola Begins With a Mystery.")
Public health experts generally back the administration's actions, and most oppose a travel ban, at least for the moment. But they say the issue is more nuanced than Frieden has made it out to be. A travel ban would have kept Duncan from bringing Ebola to the U.S., they say, and could keep out some future infected travelers.
"It is a question, I think, on which people can honestly disagree," said Stephen S. Morse, professor of epidemiology at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. "There are good arguments to be made on both sides. It's partly a philosophical choice."
Politics and Perception
Six African countries have already banned or suspended flights from Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone, and others have instituted other travel restrictions. (Related: "Doctors and Nurses Risk Everything to Fight Ebola in West Africa.")
And since late August, the U.S. State Department has urged Americans to avoid all non-essential travel to Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea.
But Congressman Alan Grayson, a Florida Democrat, wants the U.S government to go further. Grayson said he would propose legislation calling for a ban if the administration continues to avoid one.
"It will prevent infected travelers in whom Ebola is asymptomatic and undetectable from traveling to the United States and then exposing Americans to the disease after they become symptomatic," he said by e-mail.
It takes anywhere from 2 to 21 days for someone who has been exposed to the Ebola virus to show symptoms. People who are not symptomatic are not contagious, and Duncan did not have symptoms while he was traveling and so could not pass the virus on to fellow passengers. No one who came into contact with Duncan has yet become ill, though several family members and contacts are under observation until the 21 days have elapsed.
A number of high-profile Republican politicians, including Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, have said that more needs to be done to keep Ebola victims from arriving on U.S. soil. But they've stopped short of demanding a full ban.
Wendy Parmet, director of the Program on Health Policy and Law at Northeastern University School of Law, in Boston, said that travel bans are appealing because they make people feel safe. But she argued that safety could be an illusion.
"It gives us the false assurance that we can ignore the problems that are happening in Africa," she said. "At the end of the day, we can't. And our own safety depends on our getting it right there, not on building the walls."
Photograph by Berk Ozkan, Anadolu Agency, Getty Images
Would a Ban Matter?
Many public health experts who oppose the travel ban argue that it's simply not practical. That includes Columbia University's Morse, who describes himself as a "fence-sitter" on the issue but doesn't support a travel ban right now because people with financial means can travel to an intermediate country before entering the United States. West Africa's many porous borders make such travel even easier, he said.
It wouldn't make sense to ban people who fly out of Senegal-where, like the United States, there has been only one case of Ebola, Morse said. But if one person with Ebola made it there, others could, too.
A ban could also encourage people to lie about where they have been, Morse said: "One of the real concerns is that if you outlaw [travel], it will discourage people from coming forth with the truth."
Frieden, for his part, has focused his opposition to a travel ban on the hardship it would present for fighting the epidemic in Africa.
"If we do something that impedes our ability to stop the outbreak in West Africa, it could spread further there," he said Tuesday.
On Sunday, Frieden also cited the example of Senegal, which has restricted flights from the affected countries. The restrictions delayed the arrival of investigators looking for people who had come into contact with the country's one Ebola patient.
Plus, international volunteers who go into West Africa to help treat Ebola patients need to know that they can get back out, Frieden said.
At SIM, an international mission that has led Ebola treatment centers and seen two of its American missionaries recover from the virus, travel restrictions might make volunteers think twice, said George Salloum, who leads the agency's Ebola crisis response team.
"Anything you do to restrict movement of people back and forth or keeping them from getting back to work, it could have an impact on the flow of people willing to serve overseas," he said.
Screening at Airports-and Beyond
Those on both sides of the travel ban debate appear to support aggressive airport screening, to ensure that sick people won't be able to get on a plane and potentially infect fellow passengers.
President Obama on Monday announced plans to step up airport screening in the United States and in West Africa, evaluating travelers for signs of illness, better informing airport personnel on how to spot Ebola, and handing out fact sheets to incoming passengers from affected countries.
He did not reveal specifics about what he would change and did not mention a travel ban.
Frieden said Tuesday that he would announce more details in a few days. Among measures being considered, he said, are temperature checks and questionnaires given to passengers arriving in the United States. On Wednesday morning, CNN reported that temperature checks will begin this weekend or next week on passengers whose travel itineraries include the affected West African nations.
Frieden said that 77 people have been blocked from leaving the affected countries since this summer, when officials began questioning travelers and screening their temperatures at airports in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. None of them tested positive for Ebola, he said, adding that they most likely had malaria, a mosquito-borne disease that shares early symptoms with Ebola.
A temperature check could have stopped Patrick Sawyer, a Liberian-born American citizen who flew from Liberia to Nigeria in late July while sick with Ebola, from spreading the disease.
Sawyer directly or indirectly infected 20 people in Nigeria, eight of whom died, as did Sawyer himself. It's unclear whether he knew he had Ebola when he left Liberia. A travel ban likely would not have stopped Sawyer from entering because he was a U.S. citizen, though an effective temperature scan would have.
Still, airport screening is hardly foolproof. Duncan may have lied when answering questions about whether he had been exposed to anyone with Ebola. Or he may not have realized that helping a pregnant neighbor to the hospital in Liberia exposed him to the virus, Frieden said.
Beyond airports, hospitals are an important second line of defense against Ebola, said Jill Holdsworth, an infection control practitioner at Inova Mount Vernon Hospital in Alexandria, Virginia.
Duncan's symptoms were missed as Ebola the first time he went to Texas Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, although he apparently indicated that he had recently arrived from Liberia. Several hospital workers and the ambulance drivers who took Duncan back to Texas Presbyterian two days later may have been exposed because of that mistake.
"As soon as a patient walks in, if they present with a fever, you should ask them about recent travel history," said Holdsworth, who is also a spokesperson for the 15,000-member Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology. "If they say yes, they immediately get taken to a room until we can figure out what's going on. That's what every hospital has to be doing."
afrodenzi
Platinum Member
- Nov 1, 2010
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Ebola haichagui rangi ya mtu .
kui
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- Mar 2, 2009
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...not the US, the West African countries with Ebola need to ban travelling to, and from their countries(except for health workers) for sometime so that they can contain it to avoid a pandemic
BAK
JF-Expert Member
- Feb 11, 2007
- 124,767
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- #56
(CNN) -- A nurse contracts Ebola. An urgent care center in Boston shuts down when a sick man recently returned from Liberia walks in. Health care workers complain they haven't been properly trained to protect themselves against the deadly virus.
Public health experts are asking whether the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is partly to blame.
Here are five things they say the CDC is getting wrong.
1. The CDC is telling possible Ebola patients to "call a doctor."
How much do you know about Ebola?
States scramble to dispose of Ebola waste
Are doctors and nurses safe from Ebola?
Did NBC reporter violate quarantine?
When passengers arrive in the United States from Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea, they're handed a flier instructing them to "call a doctor" if they feel ill.
Never mind how hard it is to get your doctor on the phone, but even if you could, it's quite possible she'd tell you to go to the nearest emergency room or urgent care center.
We saw how well that worked at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas. On September 25, the hospital sent a feverish Thomas Eric Duncan home even though he had told them he'd recently been to Liberia.
And we've seen how well that worked in Massachusetts, where an ill man recently returned from Liberia walked into an urgent care center, which then evacuated its other patients and closed for several hours.
One way to do it differently: Set up a toll free number for returning passengers that would reach a centralized office, which would then dispatch a local ambulance to get the patient to a hospital.
The hospital would be warned that a possible Ebola patient is on the way, and the patient would not be brought through the main emergency room.
That's the idea of Gavin Macgregor-Skinner, an assistant professor at Penn State's Department of Public Health Sciences.
"Do you really want someone with Ebola hopping on a bus to get to the hospital? No," he said. "And once they get there, do you want them sitting in the waiting room next to the kid with the broken arm? Again, no."
2. The CDC director says any hospital can care for Ebola patients.
"Essentially any hospital in the country can safely take care of Ebola. You don't need a special hospital to do it," Dr. Thomas Frieden said Sunday at a press conference.
"I think it's very unfortunate that he keeps re-stating that," said Macgregor-Skinner, the global projects manager for the Elizabeth R. Griffin Foundation.
He said when it comes to handling Ebola, not all hospitals are created equally. As seen at Presbyterian, using protective gear can be tricky. Plus, it's a challenge to handle infectious waste from Ebola patients, such as hospital gowns contaminated with blood or vomit.
Dr. Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota, said some hospitals have more experience with infectious diseases and consistently do drills in how to deal with biohazards.
"If you were a burn unit patient, wouldn't you want to go to a burn unit?" he said.
The CDC may already be moving in that direction.
Designating certain hospitals as Ebola treatment units "is something we're exploring further," said Tom Skinner, a spokesman for the agency.
CDC 'doubling down' on Ebola training efforts
3. The CDC didn't encourage the "buddy system" for doctors and nurses.
Under this system, a doctor or nurse who is about to do a procedure on an Ebola patient has a "buddy," another health care worker, who acts as a safety supervisor, monitoring the worker from the time he puts on the gear until the time he takes it off.
The "buddy system" has been effective in stopping other kinds of infections in hospitals.
Skinner said the CDC is considering recommending such a system to hospitals.
4. CDC didn't encourage doctors to develop Ebola treatment guidelines.
Taking care of Ebola patients is tricky, because certain procedures might put doctors and nurses in contact with the patient's infectious bodily fluids.
At Sunday's press conference, Frieden hinted that Presbyterian might have performed two measures -- inserting a breathing tube and giving kidney dialysis -- that were unlikely to help Duncan. He described them as a "desperate measure" to save his life.
"Both of those procedures may spread contaminated materials and are considered high-risk procedures," he said. "I'm not familiar with any prior patient with Ebola who has undergone either intubation or dialysis."
Osterholm said CDC should coordinate with medical groups to come up with treatment guidelines.
"We could have and should have done it a few months ago," he said.
5. The CDC put too much trust in protective gear.
Once Duncan was diagnosed, health authorities started making daily visits to 48 of his contacts.
But that didn't include several dozen workers at Presbyterian who took care of Duncan after he was diagnosed. They weren't followed because they were wearing protective gear when they had contact with Duncan. Instead, they monitored themselves.
Public health experts said that was a misstep, as the CDC should have realized that putting on and taking off protective gear is often done imperfectly and one of the workers might get an infection.
"We have to recognize that our safety work tells us that breaches of protocol are the norm, not the exception in health care," said Dr. Peter Pronovost, senior vice president for patient safety and quality at Johns Hopkins Medicine. "We routinely break precautions."
Skinner said that in this case, self-monitoring worked, but that monitoring from health officials can be beneficial, too, and so health care workers who were involved in Duncan's care will now get daily visits from health authorities.
Public health experts are asking whether the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is partly to blame.
Here are five things they say the CDC is getting wrong.
1. The CDC is telling possible Ebola patients to "call a doctor."
How much do you know about Ebola?
States scramble to dispose of Ebola waste
Are doctors and nurses safe from Ebola?
Did NBC reporter violate quarantine?
When passengers arrive in the United States from Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea, they're handed a flier instructing them to "call a doctor" if they feel ill.
Never mind how hard it is to get your doctor on the phone, but even if you could, it's quite possible she'd tell you to go to the nearest emergency room or urgent care center.
We saw how well that worked at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas. On September 25, the hospital sent a feverish Thomas Eric Duncan home even though he had told them he'd recently been to Liberia.
And we've seen how well that worked in Massachusetts, where an ill man recently returned from Liberia walked into an urgent care center, which then evacuated its other patients and closed for several hours.
One way to do it differently: Set up a toll free number for returning passengers that would reach a centralized office, which would then dispatch a local ambulance to get the patient to a hospital.
The hospital would be warned that a possible Ebola patient is on the way, and the patient would not be brought through the main emergency room.
That's the idea of Gavin Macgregor-Skinner, an assistant professor at Penn State's Department of Public Health Sciences.
"Do you really want someone with Ebola hopping on a bus to get to the hospital? No," he said. "And once they get there, do you want them sitting in the waiting room next to the kid with the broken arm? Again, no."
2. The CDC director says any hospital can care for Ebola patients.
"Essentially any hospital in the country can safely take care of Ebola. You don't need a special hospital to do it," Dr. Thomas Frieden said Sunday at a press conference.
"I think it's very unfortunate that he keeps re-stating that," said Macgregor-Skinner, the global projects manager for the Elizabeth R. Griffin Foundation.
He said when it comes to handling Ebola, not all hospitals are created equally. As seen at Presbyterian, using protective gear can be tricky. Plus, it's a challenge to handle infectious waste from Ebola patients, such as hospital gowns contaminated with blood or vomit.
Dr. Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota, said some hospitals have more experience with infectious diseases and consistently do drills in how to deal with biohazards.
"If you were a burn unit patient, wouldn't you want to go to a burn unit?" he said.
The CDC may already be moving in that direction.
Designating certain hospitals as Ebola treatment units "is something we're exploring further," said Tom Skinner, a spokesman for the agency.
CDC 'doubling down' on Ebola training efforts
3. The CDC didn't encourage the "buddy system" for doctors and nurses.
Under this system, a doctor or nurse who is about to do a procedure on an Ebola patient has a "buddy," another health care worker, who acts as a safety supervisor, monitoring the worker from the time he puts on the gear until the time he takes it off.
The "buddy system" has been effective in stopping other kinds of infections in hospitals.
Skinner said the CDC is considering recommending such a system to hospitals.
4. CDC didn't encourage doctors to develop Ebola treatment guidelines.
Taking care of Ebola patients is tricky, because certain procedures might put doctors and nurses in contact with the patient's infectious bodily fluids.
At Sunday's press conference, Frieden hinted that Presbyterian might have performed two measures -- inserting a breathing tube and giving kidney dialysis -- that were unlikely to help Duncan. He described them as a "desperate measure" to save his life.
"Both of those procedures may spread contaminated materials and are considered high-risk procedures," he said. "I'm not familiar with any prior patient with Ebola who has undergone either intubation or dialysis."
Osterholm said CDC should coordinate with medical groups to come up with treatment guidelines.
"We could have and should have done it a few months ago," he said.
5. The CDC put too much trust in protective gear.
Once Duncan was diagnosed, health authorities started making daily visits to 48 of his contacts.
But that didn't include several dozen workers at Presbyterian who took care of Duncan after he was diagnosed. They weren't followed because they were wearing protective gear when they had contact with Duncan. Instead, they monitored themselves.
Public health experts said that was a misstep, as the CDC should have realized that putting on and taking off protective gear is often done imperfectly and one of the workers might get an infection.
"We have to recognize that our safety work tells us that breaches of protocol are the norm, not the exception in health care," said Dr. Peter Pronovost, senior vice president for patient safety and quality at Johns Hopkins Medicine. "We routinely break precautions."
Skinner said that in this case, self-monitoring worked, but that monitoring from health officials can be beneficial, too, and so health care workers who were involved in Duncan's care will now get daily visits from health authorities.
Nyani Ngabu
Platinum Member
- May 15, 2006
- 98,290
- 144,499
Lancashire
JF-Expert Member
- Sep 20, 2014
- 14,081
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Huyu nurse anaendelea vizuri Na anategemewa kupona kabisa within 3 days to come. She's white btw .... The black people who got infected continued to die
Lancashire
JF-Expert Member
- Sep 20, 2014
- 14,081
- 10,455
Inachagua why Mr.Duncan died and the white nurse survived in the same clinic and the same illness
Nyani Ngabu
Platinum Member
- May 15, 2006
- 98,290
- 144,499
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