The government is telling the nation’s hospitals to “think Ebola.”

Every hospital must know how to diagnose Ebola in people who have been in West Africa and be ready to isolate a suspected case, Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Monday.

He said the CDC is working to improve protections for hospital workers after a nurse caring for an Ebola patient in Dallas became the first person to become infected with the disease inside the U.S.

“We have to rethink the way we address Ebola infection control,” Frieden said, “because even a single infection is unacceptable.”

The CDC is scrambling to interview all staff of the Dallas hospital who could have been exposed to the patient, a Liberian man who became sick after traveling to the United States and died at the hospital. Anyone at risk will be monitored, he said.

Before the nurse’s illness, those who cared for that patient while he was in isolation were told to check themselves for fever or signs of illness but weren’t monitored by health officials. The nurse self-reported her fever.

“We need to consider the possibility that there could be additional cases, particularly among the health care workers who cared for the index patient” — the Liberian man — “when he was so ill,” Frieden said.

Ebola patients aren’t contagious until they begin experiencing symptoms, Frieden said. As they get sicker, they become more infectious and the amount of virus in their bodily fluids increases — putting those caring for them at greater risk.

The CDC already was monitoring about 50 people who had contact with the patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, before he was hospitalized. None have developed symptoms. They are still within the 21-day incubation period, however.

Frieden said the CDC is doubling down on Ebola training and support for hospitals and health care workers. But they still don’t know exactly how the nurse, whose name was not released, was exposed to the virus despite wearing the recommended protective gear…Read More

Source and Original Content By BCNN 1

As follow-up tests confirmed Sunday that a Texas nurse who cared for patient Thomas Eric Duncan has become the first known American to contract Ebola in the country, the largest union of registered nurses said there’s a “huge vacuum in both credibility and implementation” in hospitals’ preparedness to contain Ebola.

National Nurses United said that a survey conducted among 2,000 nurses at more than 750 facilities in 46 states and the District of Columbia shows that 85 percent of them had not been provided education by their hospitals about Ebola in a setting that would allow them to interact with or ask administrators questions, Dallas News reported.

“As has been shown in Dallas, they are not prepared,” the Union’s co-president Deborah Burger was quoted as saying in a press conference in Oakland, California, on Sunday. “There is a huge vacuum in both credibility and implementation.”

In the survey, 76 percent said their hospital has not communicated to them any policy regarding potential admission of patients infected by Ebola.

The chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Sunday that a breach in infection control protocols was behind it, although the agency is yet to investigate.

Ebola – which can cause fever, vomiting and diarrhea – spreads through contact with bodily fluids such as blood or saliva. Since it began in West Africa in March, it has taken more than 4,000 lives.

CDC chief Thomas Frieden said the Ebola virus was transmitted from Duncan to the nurse either because there was a breach of protocol at the hospital or an error was made by the nurse.

“At some point there was a breach in protocol,” he claimed during a second news conference Sunday. “That breach in protocol resulted in this infection. This tells us there is a need to enhance training and to make sure protocols are followed.”

The CDC announced Sunday afternoon that follow-up tests on the nurse’s blood confirm that she has Ebola.

“We’re still not clear on why our hospitals are dragging their feet,” Burger added. “We think there may be a bit of denial involved in this.”

“Nurses and other frontline hospital personnel must have the highest level of protective equipment, such as the Hazmat suits Emory University or the CDC themselves use while transporting patients and hands on training and drills for all RNs [registered nurses] and other hospital personnel, that includes the practice putting on and taking off the optimal equipment,” RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of National Nurses United, added in a statement Sunday.

President Obamas spoke with Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell on Sunday and directed that the CDC investigation “move as expeditiously as possible,” according to a statement by the White House…Read More

Source and Original Content by Christian Headlines