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Positive Ebola Test In Second Texas Health Worker
mdsolar tips news that a second healthcare worker at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital has tested positive for the Ebola virus. Like the nurse who tested positive a few days ago, this worker was involved in providing care to Eric Duncan, the Liberian man who seems to have brought the virus into the country. The CDC is working to identify further exposures to the local community, though the Times says a second infection among the 70+ medical professionals who were around Duncan is not unexpected. The largest U.S. nurses union says a lack of proper protective gear and constantly changing protocols are to blame for exposures. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization says infection rates in West Africa are such that within a few months, they can expect 10,000 new Ebola cases a week. They also say the death rate for the current outbreak has risen to 70 percent.
Will someone just tell me if it's time to panic or not?
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That's just so wrong.
Pray tell, what jurisdiction does CDC or NIH have to be "all over" anything? None whatsoever. NIH is a research establishment. CDC is essentially a federal health department that has jurisdiction nowhere (maybe in DC?). There are no standardized facilities that you refer to. A research lab is not a clinical facility. Just because a lab is set up to handle highly infectious diseases doesn't make it a place where you can treat people.
The experts in this area are doing just fine, working with shit that makes Ebola look like a seasonal allergy, at facilities that are set up for that. Those people are usually not MDs, there's zero reason for them to be MDs. They're biologists of various sorts.
Demonstrably, no infectious disease experts were in charge at the facility/facilities where the health workers got infected. So your point that experts are unreliable is entirely moot. There were no experts in charge to start with.
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Ah yes, lets blame the victims, the very people who were trying to help a very sick, very dangerous man while he lay in a hospital bed dying.
What the fuck is wrong with you!?
If AIDs or hepatitis were anywhere near as communicable you would see a mass exodus from the medical profession: working with sick people would be a death sentence waiting to happen. You can work with, live with, eat with, share a bathroom with, even fuck (with appropriate protection) people who have HIV or hepatitis without contracting it and you can do so for years if you're careful. We've now had 2 out of a team of perhaps 60 who cared for Duncan get sick. Does that sound equivalent to you?
Well, now that we've had 3 cases in the Dallas area, we might actually see the US-Mexico border secured... ...by the Mexican government.
Redundancy is good And also good.
The failures of this hospital in dealing with a novel and gravely serious situation are in no way indicative of remarkably incompetent individuals or sub-standard hospital policies.
Even the most complete training cannot provide experience. Day to day work in a hospital is boring and routine, and when faced with the unknown people are going to fall back on that routine, not what they were trained to do briefly and long ago. Nurses who haven't dealt much with explosive diarrhea or projectile vomiting won't have practice being meticulous about preventing splatter on every part of their skin or porous clothing. Simply telling someone to be careful and then sending them off unsupervised and unaided isn't terribly effective.
Hospitals cannot afford to maintain a full wardrobe of gear to deal with even one Ebola patient throughout the course of treatment, nor are they set up to dispose of that gear at the rate it piles up after use. Adequate supplies will need to be provided on a reactive (not proactive) basis. Protocols, however, simply assume that the gear is there and ready to be used by people well versed in their use. It doesn't do any good to have well thought out procedures in place if it isn't possible or practical to implement them.
People who blame the nurses, or the hospital, or the patient are holding them up to an unreasonable standard. These people are not special. They're not clowns and they're not villains. They're just normal folk reacting the way normal folk will, and neither the CDC nor anyone else has some magic wand to wave to prevent this exact same scenario from playing out the next time. It's unfortunate, but it is manageable and we should focus on making sure the right lessons are learned from it.
Some interesting viewing, somewhat related: http://www.ted.com/talks/atul_... http://thedailyshow.cc.com/vid...
Please do not simplify such a grave topic.
There are innumerable communicable diseases in the world, including the US. Many of these infectious diseases have very serious health consequences, also including those in the US. As such, there are numerous (and sometimes onerous) regulations put in place by the public and private sectors to educate and prepare those who are at the front line.
The most basic form is something called universal precautions, which should be observed with EVERY patient you come in contact with. Essentially the goal is to treat every patient's bodily fluid as if it is contaminated, thereby protecting yourself from unknown diseases that the patient may have, and preventing spreading of nosocomial diseases to an otherwise healthy patient. If a patient is known to be infected, additional precautions are put in place in accordance with the communicability of the infection. These include everything from gowns and gloves, all the way to pressurized rooms, N95 respirators, and the so called "space suits". Used appropriately, these are excellent barriers to the spread of disease.
I guarantee those involved with Mr. Duncan's care were certified in all of the above, and once diagnosed Mr. Duncan was almost certainly triaged appropriately. Additionally, the hospital should have ample stock of all of the above equipment -- it is used on a daily basis in the hospital with or without ebola. So the question becomes, how did subsequent infections occur. There must have been a breakdown somewhere in the above steps, whether it was the hospital providing faulty facilities, faulty precautionary equipment, or faulty usage of said equipment. YOU nor I can say nothing more -- we do not know where the blame lays. (Also, run through your mental exercises again keeping in mind that there were no infections in Atlanta or Nebraska, other sites that have taken care of ebola patients). Just take a deep breath and stay civil.
Sauce: I am a doctor who has worked with the sickest of the sick here in the US. I have seen hospitals error, gloves break, and an incredible number of health care professionals misuse equipment and ignore precautions.
As an aside, health care professionals are always at the front line of these things and always at risk of the worst. A very sizable number of physicians, if they are being honest, will admit to inadvertently sticking themselves with a dirty needle or scalpel (myself included). The risk of communicable diseases, very serious pathologies, are small but not inconsequential. I personally know doctors who have died form AIDS, and radiologists with myeloproliferative disorders. Do you remember the AIDS epidemic in the 1980's, especially before anyone knew the etiology? Where was the mass exodus in the 80s? With all the fear in society, physicians and health care professionals were still compelled to treat anyone sick. Despite this, from my anecdotal experience, more doctors are leaving medicine because of increasing litigation, oppressive malpractice laws and increasing malpractice insurance, rather than fears of communicable diseases.
And a bit of advice: although the treatment of hepatitis and HIV have improved over the years (and very solid evidence that HIV is innately becoming less virulent, another interesting story in and of itself), I would recommend not sharing needles or playing with infected fluids of others.