I wouldn’t rush into blaming the health care worker for sloppiness. The authorities are throwing her under the bus mighty quick, and it may be that the protocols are more to blame.
The best way to isolate the virus is to sit next to a patient on the bus.
The smartest man in America told me that.
Was the author there? Can he confirm that procedures were not followed?
I guess it is nice to have an eye witness to the victims “carelessness” and that can confirm that she failed to follow procedure. Take it from Bob, he was apparently there.
Nah, the procedures pushed by the CDC just could not have been inadequate, unpossible! Why would the political appointee running the CDC want to do something political??
Good thing the CDC didn’t just blame the victim to cover their own butts! Then change their stance.
Now the CDC says all caregivers are considered at-risk to contract ebola.
Someone said: This whiner needs some facts rather than blaming the nurse.
The nurse DID follow protocol!
The protocol was inadequate!
THPH is NOT a CDC certified Level 4 Biosafety Unit. Frieden can claim, after spending billions on Level 4 units, that any ol’ podunk hospital can handle Ebola but it’s those pesky proper facilities, equipment and trained staff that he is failing to address.
Level 4 Isolation Unit Beds
2? - Emory, Atlanta
3 - The Care and Isolation Unit in Missoula, Montana, opened in 2005 by the National Institutes of Health to serve lab workers at Rocky Mountain Laboratories, hasn’t yet served an infectious disease patient, only a handful with tuberculosis or contagious bacterial infections. The rooms look like everyday hospital rooms—white, sterile, a TV and window for entertainment. That’s because St. Patrick Hospital retrofitted three of its ICU rooms to make the unit.
10 – Omaha, Nebraska Medical Center run twice yearly drills with decontamination at their hospital’s 10-bed biocontainment unit. Opened in 2005. Has never had an infectious disease patient. Prior to Dr. Sacra in Sept., the unit had only briefly housed one patient with malaria five years ago. Malaria does not require quarantine.
7 - NIH opened a seven-bed Special Clinical Studies Unit at the Clinical Research Center in Bethesda to replace it. Its four patient rooms (two doubles and a single). Bethesda unit has only served a patient with a drug-resistant bacterial illness. “It can handle the highest level of respiratory virus, but Ebola isn’t even spread that way,” said Richard Davey, deputy clinical director of NIH’s Division of Clinical Research.
? - US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) – Ft. Detrick, Maryland.
This is inaccurate. There is some value in the article, but the details are wrong in significant ways. We did not kill the liar from Liberia. We have no effective treatment available for patient treatment beyond fluids, and admitting him earlier would have helped with isolation and reduced the risk to the community, but it would not have made a significant difference in his chances for survival.
The suggestion that donning and correctly removing personal protective equipment is "very simple . . . the simplest of procedures" is absurd. I have worn that equipment (for real, for some consulting work), and it is not a simple procedure. It's hard to do at all and even harder to do perfectly, and pretending it is simple prevents planners from seeing that their protocols have problems when dealing with real-world physicians and nurses in most hospitals.