Re: Ebola
Scary stuff indeed.
Re: Ebola
Are you guys aware that in most hospitals in the US, the nurses do not answer to the doctors in the hospitals. The nurses answer to their nursing administrators who then answer to the administrators of the hospital. THEY DO NOT ANSWER TO DOCTORS.
Therefore, the nurse training/education, etc needs to come from the administration, not the physicians. If the physicians are blamed for not teaching the nurses, I’m going to burst a vein on this one, because we doctors have been slapped in the face historically by nursing, they do not LET US teach them, or SUPERVISE them.
If I see a nurse putting on gear improperly for a routine infection like c-diff that is all over every hospital, I will actually GET IN TROUBLE.
SO WHY ARE THE NURSES GETTING ON TV TEARFUL?
Imaan se someone needs a slap.
Re: Ebola
I honestly need to see the proof of this, and I want to know who from the cdc answered that call. I bet it was a do takay ke employee, prolly some nurse. They don’t hire docs to pick up phones. Again, it’s the main problem with our healthcare system. The vast majority of employees in hospitals, sorry to say, are not smart.
God, I’m watching the nursing head from Presby and she is blaming the doctors. Of course she is. Don’t blame the nurses. They want nursing heads to be in charge of nursing teaching and education, not doctors, this is the crap chute they get.
Re: Ebola
CDC has it in their manuals and in writing that when in quarantine, you do not get on a commercial airline. You can get in your own car, as the CDC director said, but there are restrictions even with that, and you need to be notifying people of your movements when you are in quarantine. That’s CDC guidelines of how qurantine gets done. So if that nurse was told it’s ok to travel, then the person on the phone from the CDC was incompetent and couldn’t read directions. The administration of the hospital should have had all nursing on lock-down. You don’t see the docs getting on planes do you? It’s the nurses? Why? Because half of them aren’t listening - the LPNs are notoriously stupid, but people believe oh she’s a nurse, she must know stuff. She must know that it’s ok to get on a plane, so her family and friends shrugged it off.
She KNEW she was dealing with poop and vomit of an ebola patient. SHE KNEW THAT. What’s the excuse she has of getting on the plane in the first place to leave Dallas or furthermore, leave her home/work without talking to her hospital? Did she talk to her boss and inform them of her trip and if it’s ok for her to leave?
The idea that people need to have some level of self responsibility simply does not exist in the US healthcare system.
I have currently a patient with acinetobacter infection in his lungs. He walks out of the isolation room without a mask, and no one in the hospital can force him to wear a mask. I have ZERO power to put a policeman in front of his room with a gun to prevent him from breaking these rules. But honestly, that’s what our system needs to prevent infection. They need PEOPLE FOLLOWING RULES.
NURSES DO NOT FOLLOW RULES and PATIENTS DO NOT FOLLOW RULES.
That’s the number 1 reason why infectious diseases spread the way they do in hospitals. Just go to any hospital ward and observe as a fly on the wall nurses gowning up and gowning down when coming in and out of a isolation room. Watch the dudes who come in with the food trays - they NEVER gown up, so they just transmit infections room to room.
NO ONE SAYS ANYTHING TO THESE PEOPLE.
Meanwhile I recall if we didn’t , as docs, wash our hands prior to entering a room, there was a nurse with a clipboard watching us, noting it down and notifying our program we didn’t wash our hands.
No one ever gave me a clipboard.
I’d really like a clipboard.
I’d clipboard the *** out of everyone.
Re: Ebola
Interestingly,
Ebola crisis update: US officials defend Ebola response; House panel convenes | 89.3 KPCC
In the face of skepticism in Congress, health officials tried to assure the nation Thursday that they can head off an Ebola outbreak in the U.S. despite mistakes that let the deadly virus spread to two nurses and cleared one of them to fly.
The revelation that one of the hospital nurses was allowed on a commercial airline the day before she was diagnosed raised new alarms about the U.S. response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Some lawmakers pressed for a ban on travel to the U.S. from the region — a course President Barack Obama is resisting.
Obama directed his administration to respond in a “much more aggressive way” to the threat and, for a second day in a row, canceled his out-of-town trips to stay in town and monitor the Ebola response. He was calling foreign leaders and U.S. lawmakers to discuss what more must be done, the White House said, and bringing his Cabinet members together on the matter.
But a ban on travel to the U.S. from the Ebola-stricken countries is not under consideration, spokesman Josh Earnest reiterated Thursday.
Obama believes the U.S. already is taking the necessary steps to protect the public by screening passengers as they depart West Africa and again when they enter the U.S., Earnest said.
In Sierra Leone, the government announced the virus had infected two people in the last part of the country that had been free of the disease, in the mountainous north, despite aggressive steps to keep it at bay.
The first nurse stricken in the U.S., Nina Pham, who contracted Ebola after treating a Liberian man at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, was being flown to the National Institutes of Health outside Washington on Thursday, while a second nurse has already been transferred to a biohazard infectious disease center at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta.
The two nurses, Pham and Amber Joy Vinson, had been involved in providing care to Thomas Duncan, who died of Ebola last week.
In a hearing on Capitol Hill, the chairman of a House committee cited “demonstrated failures” in the government’s response. Rep. Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania said the “trust and credibility of the administration and government are waning as the American public loses confidence each day.” Seated before him were leaders of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the NIH.
Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the CDC, testified that despite the latest incidents, “we remain confident that our public health and health care systems can prevent an Ebola outbreak here.”
In his prepared testimony, the Texas hospital’s chief clinical officer, Dr. Daniel Varga, admitted the facility had made mistakes in Duncan’s initial treatment, he apologized for that.
“We did not correctly diagnose his symptoms as those of Ebola,” Varga said. “We are deeply sorry.” Duncan was initially sent home from the emergency room with antibiotics for his high fever, despite saying he’d come from Liberia.
Varga testified to the committee by video conference.
In Europe, Spain’s government is wrestling with treatment questions, too. The condition of a nursing assistant infected at a Madrid hospital appeared to be improving, but a person who came in contact with her before she was hospitalized developed a fever and was being tested Thursday.
That second person is not a health care worker, a Spanish Health Ministry spokesman said.
To this point, only hospital workers — the Madrid nursing assistant and the two nurses in Dallas — had been known to have contracted Ebola outside West Africa during the outbreak that began in March.
U.S. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said a trust fund he launched to fight Ebola, with a $1 billion goal, has a paltry $100,000 in the bank. He appealed to nations to do more about a “huge and urgent global problem that demands a huge and urgent global response.” Some $20 million has been spent from the fund.
France said that on Saturday it will begin screening passengers who arrive at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport on the once-daily flight from Guinea’s capital.
In the U.S., Customs and health officials at airports in Chicago, Atlanta, suburban Washington and Newark, New Jersey, were to begin taking the temperatures of passengers from the three hardest-hit West African countries Thursday. The screenings, using no-touch thermometers, started Saturday at New York’s Kennedy International Airport.
With hospitals and airports on heightened alert, Frieden said the CDC is receiving hundreds of requests for help in ruling out Ebola in travelers. So far 12 cases merited testing, he said.
Frieden said investigators are trying to figure out how the nurses caught the virus from that Liberian patient, Thomas Eric Duncan. In the meantime, he said, their cases show a need to strengthen the infection-control procedures that “allowed for exposure to the virus.”
Duncan’s death and the sick health care workers in the U.S. and Spain “intensify our concern about the global health threat,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health.
He said two Ebola vaccine candidates were undergoing a first phase of human clinical testing this fall. But he cautioned that scientists were still in the early stages of seeking new treatments or a vaccine.
A nurse at the Dallas hospital, Texas Health Presbyterian, on Thursday described a “chaotic scene” when the hospital faced Duncan, its first Ebola patient.
Briana Aguirre, who has helped treat the first nurse who was infected, told NBC’s “Today” show she felt exposed in the protective gear the hospital provided.
“In the second week of an Ebola crisis at my hospital, the only gear they were offering us at that time, and up until that time, is gear that is allowing our necks to be uncovered?” Aguirre said, adding that she piled on gloves and booties in triplicate and wore a plastic suit up to her neck.
The hospital said it used the protective gear recommended by the CDC and updated the equipment as CDC guidelines changed. Because nurses complained that their necks were exposed, the hospital ordered hoods for them, according to a statement from Texas Health Presbyterian.
Frieden said nurse Amber Joy Vinson never should have been allowed to fly on a commercial jetliner because she had been exposed to the virus while caring for the first Ebola patient.
Still, a CDC official cleared Vinson to board the Frontier Airlines flight from Cleveland to the Dallas area. Her reported temperature — 99.5 degrees — was below the threshold set by the agency, according to agency spokesman David Daigle.
Ebola patients are not considered contagious until they have symptoms.
Vinson was diagnosed with Ebola a day after the flight, news that sent airline stocks falling amid fears it could dissuade people from flying.
Frontier has taken the aircraft out of service. The plane was flown Wednesday without passengers from Cleveland to Denver, where the airline said it would undergo a fourth cleaning, including replacement of seat covers, carpeting and air filters.
**10:01 a.m. **A House GOP chairman says the public is losing confidence by the day in the government’s strategy on Ebola. He says mistakes and errors in judgment have been made.
Congressman Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania made his comments as he convened a congressional hearing on the response to the deadly virus. It came amid growing anxiety in the U.S. over the possibility of Ebola spreading widely here, something public health officials insist will not happen.
In his opening statement Murphy said that the "trust and credibility of the administration and government are waning as the American public loses confidence each day. He cited “demonstrated failures” with the current strategy and called for a travel ban.
Murphy spoke as leaders of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health were seated at the witness table before him.
**1st Dallas nurse with Ebola to be sent to Maryland **
The first Dallas nurse to have contracted Ebola after treating an infected Liberian man is scheduled to be moved to a specialized medical facility in Maryland.
Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins says 26-year-old Nina Pham will be taken Thursday from Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas to the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.
The NIH facility has one of four biocontainment units in the United States. Texas Health officials said Wednesday that Pham was in good condition and it wasn’t immediately clear why she’s being moved.
A second nurse who tested positive, 29-year-old Amber Joy Vinson, has been transferred to a biohazard infectious disease center at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta.
Pham and Vinson were involved in providing care to Thomas Duncan, who died of Ebola last week.
**UN: Ebola death toll rising to 4,500 this week **
The death toll from Ebola will rise this week to more than 4,500 people from the 9,000 infected and the outbreak is still out of control in three West African nations, a top official with the U.N. health agency said Thursday.
Dr. Isabelle Nuttall, director of the World Health Organization’s global capacities, alert and response, said new numbers show the outbreak is still hitting health workers hard despite precautions — with 2,700 medical workers infected and 236 dead — mainly because Ebola victims are most contagious around the time they die.
Nuttall said the focus of the world’s efforts should remain on the countries where the outbreak has been spreading out of control: Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
“Our data shows that cases are doubling every four weeks. The disease is still widespread in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, and there is persistent transmission of the virus,” she told a news conference in Geneva.
Although the effects of the crisis are increasingly being felt beyond its epicenter in West Africa, until now two nurses in Dallas and a Madrid nursing assistant are the only ones known to have contracted Ebola outside the hot zone.
Nuttall said Ebola cases were growing in Guinea’s capital of Conakry but problems with data-gathering in Liberia, which has a significant under-reporting of Ebola cases in Monrovia, the capital, make it hard to draw any conclusions there.
It will take months before the outbreak is stopped, she said, adding that WHO has identified 14 African countries where being prepared and containing Ebola is a top priority. Those countries are Benin, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Mali, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, South Sudan and Togo.
“They’ve been chosen because either they have land borders with the affected countries … or they have high travel or trade routes,” Nuttall said.
Re: Ebola
Some concerted efforts are being made…
Mass. nurses worry about Ebola preparedness - Metro - The Boston Globe
As a second nurse fell ill in Dallas, the union representing thousands of Massachusetts nurses sounded alarms Wednesday about the adequacy of Ebola preparations at hospitals in the state.
“For us, it’s hit home,” said Donna Kelly-Williams, president of the Massachusetts Nurses Association, noting that the only people to become infected with Ebola in the United States are nurses. “What I am seeing firsthand and what I have heard from nurses across the state — there are not the preparations we need.”
But hospital officials said they have been working on preparations since the summer and are responding as quickly as they can to shifting circumstances and new knowledge.
“The truth is that we attempted to be proactive from the beginning,” said Dr. Eric Goralnick, medical director of emergency preparedness at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “Now it’s here, and we can feel it. Anxiety is high. We’ve got to take it up to the next notch, and we are taking it up.”
Nurses said they are worried because someone returning from West Africa with symptoms of Ebola could seek care in any medical setting, and a nurse is likely to be the first person to interact with the patient. They say they are equally concerned about being assigned, without adequate training, to care for an Ebola patient once admitted**.**
[http://c.o0bg.com/rf/image_371w/Boston/2011-2020/2014/10/01/BostonGlobe.com/Foreign/Images/ebola1.jpg
View Graphic
Related igraphic Graphic: Ebola in the Unites States A look at the first case of Ebola to be diagnosed in the US.](http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/10/15/ebola/LhkBmkuYeG08RDpixPwC9I/igraphic.html?p1=Article_Graphic) More coverage
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Editorial: Leadership, bold steps needed on Ebola in US
Some hospitals have decided to provide training strategically. At Brigham and Women’s, for example, administrators are not going to train all 16,000 employees in donning and removing personal protective equipment, Goralnick said. Instead, the hospital will thoroughly train a special team to respond to an Ebola case.
Kelly-Williams, a nurse at Cambridge Health Alliance, said nurses across the state have told her that their only training has been an e-mail guiding them to a US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website. And she said nurses report that most hospitals do not have hazmat suits and respirators to protect those caring for an Ebola patient.
The Massachusetts Hospital Association asserted in a statement Wednesday that the state’s hospitals, with guidance from the state Department of Public Health, have been conducting Ebola response training, plan more training, and have personal protective equipment available.
“All Massachusetts hospitals have established policies for containing and treating all types of contagious diseases,” the statement said.
Still, nurses are concerned.
“Dallas was a big eye-opener,” said Karen Higgins, copresident of National Nurses United, parent of the Massachusetts nurses’ union. “The status quo is not going to work.”
Hospitals across the country have protocols for handling infectious diseases, but Ebola is “something that’s out of the realm of what we would routinely take care of,” Higgins said.
She has spoken out nationally, insisting most hospitals have failed to prepare adequately.
But on Wednesday, she said Boston Medical Center, where she works as an intensive care nurse, had “stepped up to the plate.” Although training had been minimal to date, she said, the hospital now has plans for one-on-one training and drills.
“They were one of the first places to respond to what’s happening in Dallas,” she said. “I applaud them.”
Boston Medical said in a statement the hospital “has educated relevant staff in the care of suspected or actual cases of Ebola consistent with pertinent local, state, and national guidelines.”
More than 200 training sessions are planned over the next two weeks, administrators said. Hospital officials said in a statement there is personal protective equipment “for relevant staff who will care for a suspected or actual cases.”
The disclosure that a second Texas nurse is stricken with the viral ailment followed frenzied responses in the Boston area over the Columbus Day weekend. When a patient who had traveled to Liberia went to a Braintree medical practice feeling ill, the patient was isolated, and the clinic was temporarily closed. On Monday, hazmat teams raced to a jet at Logan Airport after reports of five people with flulike symptoms aboard an Emirates flight.
In both incidents, Ebola was quickly ruled out — but not before anxiety intensified.
Patricia Powers, an operating room nurse and union chairwoman at Brigham and Women’s, said there was chaos at the hospital Monday as news broke of the Logan cases.
“There were people who were crying: ‘We don’t know what to do. We don’t have the proper equipment,’ ” Powers said.
Powers said training has consisted of a brief lunchtime session in the coffee room, at which nurses were shown a water-resistant suit that could be worn.
“There’s not one nurse that feels adequately prepared or trained,” said Meredith Scannell, an emergency nurse and union representative at the Brigham. “People are scared.”
She said that the hospital has hazmat suits and specialized respirators but that it has provided no training on using them.
But Goralnick, Brigham and Women’s emergency preparedness director, said the hospital has been “focused on this like a laser beam” since July 29 and has communicated about Ebola preparations with the staff multiple times.
The Massachusetts Nurses Association said nurses had been denied an opportunity to speak at the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Public Health on Thursday, when Ebola preparations are the topic.
Representative Jeffrey Sanchez, a Jamaica Plain Democrat and the committee’s chairman, said the hearing is intended to educate legislators on the basics of how Ebola is transmitted and what steps are being taken to prepare. With a dozen speakers already on the agenda, he said, there is not time for more. But he said he plans to hold a second hearing at which front-line health workers can speak.
Re: Ebola
Nigeria is Ebola free now!!!
Ebola: Nigeria
WHO declares Nigeria Ebola-free after 42 days with no new cases, here’s why.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) declared Nigeria Ebola-free Monday after a 42-day period with no new cases, in a success story with lessons for countries still struggling to contain the deadly virus.
“Nigeria is now free of Ebola,” WHO representative Rui Gama Vaz told a news conference in the capital Abuja, prompting a round of applause from other officials. “This is a spectacular success story.” Ebola has killed 4,546 people across Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, the three worst-affected countries. Of these, Liberia is the worst affected with over 2,200 deaths.
Related
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Liberia shuts schools as Ebola spreads, Peace Corps leaves three countries
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World Ebola fears grow with Europe and Asia on alert
Nigeria had 20 cases in total, of which eight died. The first case in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, was imported from Liberia, when a Liberian-American diplomat called Patrick Sawyer collapsed at the main international airport in Lagos on July 20. With no screening procedures in place, Sawyer was able to infect several people, including many health workers in the hospital where he was taken, which did not have proper protection equipment. But Nigerian officials soon swung into action, initiating a series of measures to successfully prevent the virus from spreading.
Isolation, diagnosis
Sawyer was isolated immediately. More importantly, two labs in Lagos had the capability to test for Ebola, and one of them able to confirm the diagnosis quickly, which was critical. The longer it takes to confirm Ebola in patients who show symptoms of the virus, the longer it takes to identify and isolate those whom they were in contact with. Early diagnosis also helps quell panic and keep people calm.
Focussed approach
Within one month of the first case, there was a centralised command outfit — the Ebola Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) — coordinating the efforts of over 1,000 people who were involved in providing treatment, raising awareness, identifying contacts and related activities. In contrast, such a system was not in place in Liberia for months since the first case was detected there.
Reaching out
Nigeria declared a health emergency almost as soon as the first case was confirmed. The government also moved swiftly to prevent rumours from spreading by rolling out a nationwide awareness campaign about the virus. Gradually, the panic subsided with people getting daily health updates, which made them realise that the victims were being cured.
Open borders
Despite the panic that was sparked by the first case, Nigeria did not close its borders to visitors from Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. Officials felt at the time that such a move would add to the fear. They instead strengthened their screening measures. It turned out to be the right call.
- See more at: Ebola: Nigeria
WHO declares Nigeria Ebola-free after 42 days with no new cases, here’s why.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) declared Nigeria Ebola-free Monday after a 42-day period with no new cases, in a success story with lessons for countries still struggling to contain the deadly virus.
“Nigeria is now free of Ebola,” WHO representative Rui Gama Vaz told a news conference in the capital Abuja, prompting a round of applause from other officials. “This is a spectacular success story.” Ebola has killed 4,546 people across Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, the three worst-affected countries. Of these, Liberia is the worst affected with over 2,200 deaths.
Related
-
Liberia shuts schools as Ebola spreads, Peace Corps leaves three countries
-
World Ebola fears grow with Europe and Asia on alert
Nigeria had 20 cases in total, of which eight died. The first case in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, was imported from Liberia, when a Liberian-American diplomat called Patrick Sawyer collapsed at the main international airport in Lagos on July 20. With no screening procedures in place, Sawyer was able to infect several people, including many health workers in the hospital where he was taken, which did not have proper protection equipment. But Nigerian officials soon swung into action, initiating a series of measures to successfully prevent the virus from spreading.
Isolation, diagnosis
Sawyer was isolated immediately. More importantly, two labs in Lagos had the capability to test for Ebola, and one of them able to confirm the diagnosis quickly, which was critical. The longer it takes to confirm Ebola in patients who show symptoms of the virus, the longer it takes to identify and isolate those whom they were in contact with. Early diagnosis also helps quell panic and keep people calm.
Focussed approach
Within one month of the first case, there was a centralised command outfit — the Ebola Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) — coordinating the efforts of over 1,000 people who were involved in providing treatment, raising awareness, identifying contacts and related activities. In contrast, such a system was not in place in Liberia for months since the first case was detected there.
Reaching out
Nigeria declared a health emergency almost as soon as the first case was confirmed. The government also moved swiftly to prevent rumours from spreading by rolling out a nationwide awareness campaign about the virus. Gradually, the panic subsided with people getting daily health updates, which made them realise that the victims were being cured.
Open borders
Despite the panic that was sparked by the first case, Nigeria did not close its borders to visitors from Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. Officials felt at the time that such a move would add to the fear. They instead strengthened their screening measures. It turned out to be the right call.
- See more at: Ebola: Nigeria
Re: Ebola
Ebola now in NYC.. 
Re: Ebola
^yes.
Re: Ebola
Ugh, panic spreading by the tabloids as usual. Ebola has been around for 40yrs, it’s not gonna mutate or become air born and frankly I don’t care much for any new news about it. Every 4-6yrs we get this crap, just like swine flu trying to scare everyone. I guess they made their gazilbillions from that.
Re: Ebola
Faisalabad man dies of Ebola.
In India,one case has been reported in a man who returned from Liberia.