Posted on 10/09/2014 1:00:42 PM PDT by blueplum
The health of Ebola-stricken Spanish nurse Teresa Romero Ramos worsened on Thursday, and two doctors who treated her were admitted to a hospital for observation.
"Her clinical situation has deteriorated but I can't give any more information due to the express wishes of the patient," said Yolanda Fuentes of the Carlos III Hospital in Madrid, according to Reuters.
The BBC reported that Ramos "was being helped with her breathing in hospital."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
mistake was apparently made taking off suit; glove brushed face.
question: How to best eliminate this error? dipping gloved hands in disinfectants prior to unsuiting? making unsuiting a two-man process? Body disinfect after unsuiting? How hot is this virus?
She’s on a respirator now.
Multi organ failure and hemorrhaging come next.
The real question should be... WHICH virus is this ?
so tragic. my mother is a retired nurse; they can take every precaution and sometimes a mistake just happens.
My prayers are with her. She risked her own life to care for two missionaries.
Brother Patrick Nshamdze, hospital director, died August 3. He was care for by
Brother Miguel Pajaras, died August 12. He was airlifted to Madrid August 7 and treated with ZMapp.
Brother Garcia Viejo died September 25. He was director of the same hospital’s Lunsar unit, and was treated in Freetown prior to being airlifted Sep 20 to the same Madrid hospital that treated Pajaras.
There are several techniques- don’t know which is best. I found the easiest was to grasp the lip of one glove at the cuff and very slowly and carefully peel it off, gently rolling it to expose the “safe” uncontaminated part. Now twist your newly exposed hand to grasp the “safe” inside and use that to do the same thing with the other glove while standing over your biohazard waste drop. As you peel the second glove off, let go, close/seal biohazard drop, then immediately decon hands/arms proximal to distal with 70% EtOH, followed by soap and water.
Another problem in the Spanish hospital is that they taped their gloves closed with duct tape, which probably wasn’t as waterproof as they thought. A Spanish doctor involved in the ward where they were treating the Ebola patients also wrote a public letter saying his suit sleeves were too short and didn’t reach his gloves. Seems like there were many lapses in containment protocol.
I would opt for rinsing off suit with bleach solution prior to removal and then a disinfecting shower afterwards, just in case.
Firestone has done an excellent job in containing Ebola at their facilities in West Africa. They discovered the suits used for chemical spills work just as well as medical containment suits in preventing spread of Ebola. Probably would be easier to disinfect, too. When a worker’s wife came down with the disease the company set up their own containment center and did not have a case where Ebola spread outside the unit.
One is not going to want to unglove before removing the suit, tho. The error was brushing a gloved hand against the bare face (I’m going to assume, while removing a mask or head cap).
Sorry, my comment was best way to remove gloves (which are generally last thing you take off). In lab I worked in with live BSL3 agents, we started with outer gloves (double gloved) since they are most likely thing to be contaminated, then start at the top and worked down, so head protection, then gown, then shoe covers, then mask, then inner gloves. For each step you go extremely slowly, careful to not touch exposed skin. Working with generally infectious agents and tissue, including animal dissection and tissue culture I followed very similar procedures.
Sorry, I originally assumed you had removed all but inner gloves. Most people ask about this because it is the trickiest part. See above for answer to your original question.
> How hot is this virus?
This virus does not stop converting tissue to liquid even after death. It stops when it runs out of tissue to liquefy.
Someone with this strain of Ebola will eventually turn to just bone, teeth and a puddle of red liquid.
thanks much, Lamb. In the US, 80% of nurses responding to a still-ongoing survey by National Nurses United say their hospitals have not communicated policy, (and who knows about other countries!) so the more advice, pointers and techniques we can get out there to help protect our nurses, the better.
Just last night I got into an extended chat with a friend who is a nurse. She has a busy life and was not following this at all, and because it is such a rare disease she didn’t really cover it in school, so she had a lot of gaps in her knowledge. Her knowledge of barrier protection and use of PPE is pretty good, but she didn’t realize modes of transmission so well (some docs I know too, unless they do research they often don’t read the primary literature so their knowledge is superficial based on high level reviews and are often incorrect). She recently stopped working in the hospital and started freelancing; I told her I was relieved because if this gets bad next year I would never stop worrying about her. We should all remember to pray for all health care providers often if this thing picks up.
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