A decontamination team entering the 2nd victims apartment. Yahoo News/Dallas PD
A second health care worker who treated Liberian Thomas Erik Duncan for Ebola has contracted the disease. Yahoo News. The female employee fell ill on Tuesday and was immediately isolated. The Ebola test came back positive this morning while results from the CDC test will be available soon. A Hazmat team was sent to her apartment to decontaminate it. The second diagnosis comes on the heels of the first transmission in the United States. Nina Pham, a 26 year old nurse, also caught the disease but officials are not sure how either patient were exposed. The CDC is monitoring 76 other health care workers at the hospital who also may have been exposed. A nursing union has raised allegations, supposedly from workers at the hospital, that the health care workers at the hospital did not have proper equipment and were confused by constantly changing protocol.
My Comment:
More bad news out of Dallas, but nothing I didn't really expect. If the nurses union is correct in their allegations, then this is no surprise at all. If it is true that the doctors and nurses were treating Duncan with exposed skin then of course there was going to be more infections. From what I understand Ebola is supposed to be treated by workers wearing the full "space suit" that covers all skin and comes with a respirator. I've also heard that the doctors and nurses necks were exposed so they covered it with medical tape. I'm no medical expert but doesn't that sound like the perfect vector for Ebola? I mean when you pull tape off of bare skin doesn't that pull out hair and cause abrasions? Sounds like a great way to cause a break in the skin that Ebola needs to get in.
I've heard a billion times since this outbreak that 1st world medical systems should be able to handle Ebola. I've said it myself more then a few times. But when hospitals are ignoring even the most basic safety concerns then I have to wonder how bad this is going to get. In addition to the problems with protective gear, the way they treated Duncan does not fill me with confidence. They let him go when he was ill, they didn't immediately isolate him and they let him sit in waiting room with other patients.
I know Duncan is fairly hated right now for what he did and for exposing so many people, but I still feel for the guy. He may have thought that by coming here that America's first world health care would save him, but all he got was the run around. He's still a scoundrel but nobody deserves to die from Ebola and this hospital is as much to blame for every other infection as he is.
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