Original Story: nydailynews.com
Like this move by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
The social media czar and his wife Priscilla Chan are donating $25 million to help the Centers for Disease Control fight the Ebola epidemic.
“We need to get Ebola under control in the near term so that it doesn’t spread further and become a long term global health crisis that we end up fighting for decades at large scale, like HIV or polio,” Zuckerberg wrote on his Facebook page on Tuesday. “We believe our grant is the quickest way to empower the CDC and the experts in this field to prevent this outcome.”
Zuckerberg’s donation will be used to fund the CDC’s efforts to eradicate the disease in the hardest-hit West African nations of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
This follows a $9 million donation Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen made last month toward the Ebola fight.
The cash infusion couldn’t come at a better time:
* Some 70% of the diagnosed cases thus far have ended in death and the World Health Organization warned in the coming months they could be dealing with 10,000 new cases a week.
“A lot more people will die” if the world doesn’t step up to the plate and deal with the unfolding crisis, Dr. Bruce Aylward of WHO said Tuesday in Geneva.
So far the Ebola death toll stands at 4,447 — nearly all the fatalities in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.
“The most important step we can take is to stop Ebola at its source,” Tom Frieden, head of the Centers for Disease Control, said. “The sooner the world comes together to help West Africa, the safer we all will be.”
* In Dallas, the first patient in the U.S. to come down with the disease said she was hanging in there.
“I want to thank everyone for their kind wishes and prayers,” Nina Pham said in a statement released by Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, where she works as a nurse. “I am blessed by the support of family and friends and am blessed to be cared for by the best team of doctors and nurses in the world here.”
Pham, 26, got infected while treating Thomas Duncan, who contracted Ebola in Liberia and died in Dallas last week.
“She is a hero,” said Tom Ha, who attends the same Catholic Church as Pham’s mother. “She knew the patient had Ebola but she treated him like any other patient.”
Pham’s parish priest, the Rev. Jim Khoi of Our Lady of Fatima Church in East Fort Worth, Texas, said he learned from the nurse’s mother that she received a blood transfusion from the nation’s first Ebola survivor, Dr. Kent Brantly.
Ebola is spread by bodily fluids and the CDC suspects Pham caught the bug while she was taking off her protective equipment.
* Frieden said the 48 people Duncan came into contact with before he was hospitalized have “passed the critical period” and have not come down with Ebola.
Translation: they are two-thirds of the way through the 21-day incubation period, which is the riskiest time frame for contracting the disease.
Pham was one of 76 hospital workers who treated Duncan and their health continues to be monitored. Also being checked is a friend of Pham who was in contact with the nurse when she came down with Ebola symptoms.
So far none of them have come down with the disease.
* Frieden said the CDC is now poised to send an “Ebola response team” within hours to any hospital that has a confirmed case. It will include doctors, epidemologists and other specialists.
“I wish we had put a team like this on the ground the day the first patient was diagnosed,” Frieden said of Pham. “That might have prevented this infection.”
* In Leipzig, Germany, a United Nations aid worker died from Ebola infection at St. Georg hospital, a spokesman said Tuesday. The Sudanese man became infected in Liberia and was evacuated to Germany Oct. 9.
The Ebola outbreak was first identified in March and some of the most heroic work has been done by the group Doctors Without Borders.
But it came at a heavy price — the organization reported that 16 of its staffers have been infected with Ebola and nine of them have died.
It has also taken a psychic toll on the doctors trying to stop Ebola from spreading.
“Where is WHO Africa? Where is the African Union?” asked Sharon Ekambaram, who heads DWB in South Africa and worked in Sierra Leone from August to September. “We’ve all heard their promises in the media but have seen very little on the ground.”
Juli Switala, a South African pediatrician with DWB, said at the clinic in Sierra Leone where she worked, they made the conscious decision to not resuscitate babies out of fear that staff may be infected by bodily fluids.
They also had to turn away pregnant women because childbirth posed an even greater risk of exposing the staff to bodily fluids, Switala said.
“The hardest part is that you never get a break from thinking about Ebola,” Switala, who returns to Sierra Leone in a few days.
Showing posts with label Ebola Outbreak. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ebola Outbreak. Show all posts
05 November 2014
ARE U.S. HOSPITALS PREPARED FOR POSSIBLE EBOLA BATTLE?
Original Story: usatoday.com
The fact that Dallas health care worker Nina Pham contracted Ebola even though she wore protective gear while treating Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person diagnosed with the deadly disease in the USA, is spurring demands for better training of health care workers and prompting calls for all U.S. Ebola patients to be cared for at one of the nation's four specially designed hospitals with biocontainment units.
But officials from two of those facilities say the super-hospitals won't be able to handle all future Ebola patients. Every hospital in the USA needs to be prepared to diagnose and treat patients with Ebola, said Bruce Ribner, medical director of the infectious disease unit at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta,which treated the first two Ebola patients in the USA, who contracted the disease in West Africa.
"It's not going to be possible, if this outbreak continues in West Africa, for a select number of institutions to care for patients," Ribner said.
Altogether, those four hospitals can accommodate just 8-13 patients, said Phil Smith, medical director of the biocontainment unit at Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, which has treated a U.S. missionary and is treating a television news cameraman, both of whom contracted the virus in West Africa. He said Nebraska has 1-2 Ebola beds, Emory 2 beds, St. Patrick Hospital in Montana 1-2 beds and the National Institutes of Health in Maryland 4-7 beds. "But I don't know if they (NIH) have the staffing," he said.
Smith said the U.S. State Department decides which patients get beds at the four biocontainment units.
The nation's largest nurses' organization says most registered nurses at hospitals around the USA have not been given adequate training to handle an Ebola patient. Many hospitals have been slow to provide the proper training because it's expensive, said Charles Idelson, spokesman for National Nurses United, which has 185,000 members.
"Part of the problem with relying on the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) is that they don't have an enforcement mechanism," he said. "What we see happening is the CDC can issue a thousand guidelines, but hospitals can choose to follow or not follow whatever guidelines they want. That's been a major roadblock to developing a national coordinated response to Ebola. For weeks, we heard assurances that the hospitals were prepared."
But he says his group's survey of more than 2,100 registered nurses at more than 750 facilities in 46 states and Washington, D.C., found that just 15% had received Ebola education where nurses had the ability to interact and ask questions. "What's happening is they're being given a CDC handout and directed to the CDC's website," he said.
The Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, which represents more than 2,000 physicians and other health care professionals, says the current Ebola outbreak "illustrates the need for increased funding for hospital epidemiology and infection prevention programs worldwide. ... The complexity of ensuring 100% adherence to infection control practices, particularly around personal protective equipment (PPE), points to the need for improved training of health care workers across all practice settings."
Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey, a Democrat, is calling for additional funding for a hospital preparedness program that has been cut by 50% since 2003. "We have to ensure that hospitals and medical facilities have the resources they need to protect public health," Casey said.
CDC director Thomas Frieden said Monday that the agency will "work with hospitals throughout the country to 'Think Ebola' in someone with a fever or other symptoms who has had travel to any of the three (West African) countries in the previous 21 days."
"We will be looking over the coming days at how we can increase training and increase training materials and availability, most urgently for the health care workers caring for the patient in Dallas, but also more generally throughout our health care system."
It's important for hospitals across the nation to be prepared and equipped to handle a potential Ebola patient because people on flights from Africa can end up in many U.S. cities, Smith said. "Every hospital, even small hospitals, have to have a plan in place to deal with a person who may just show up," he said.
He and other experts say that prepping to treat Ebola patients is costly. "I don't know the cost, except it's going to be expensive," Smith said. "Even for a smaller hospital, you need (an Ebola) dedicated staff, special nurses, a special area with a closed door between the surrounding area. Special security. Special waste handling. Every hospital that commits to prepare is going to have to spend a fair amount of money."
Ambreen Khalil, an infectious disease specialist at Staten Island University Hospital in Staten Island, N.Y., says the hospital is in the process of changing its protocol for removing PPEs. "Our protocols now require someone to observe removal of the equipment," she said. "If you don't peel it off very systematically, like layer by layer, and ensure your skin does not ever make contact with the garment, if you don't do that, you can still get Ebola.
"It is definitely challenging," she said.
Michael Guttenberg, chairman of emergency medicine at Forest Hills Hospital in Forest Hills, N.Y., said the most critical step in preparing for an Ebola patient is having a gatekeeper who can recognize such a person. "They have to have in place a person for identifying people who are potentially at risk," he said. "Essentially, they have to have at the front door a mechanism to identify patients who may be at risk."
In addition, hospitals have to partner with emergency medical services in their community so EMS workers can identify at-risk patients before they arrive at the emergency room. There are additional protocols: ensuring the safety of staff, visitors and patients; setting up an isolation room, and training staff in putting on and taking off the personal protective equipment worn when interacting with an Ebola patient.
Guttenberg said that removing the gear, especially, is a precise, exacting process that can take 6-10 minutes. "If there's any soiling of the outer garment, and if they remove it incorrectly and the outer garment comes into contact with their mucous membranes or their skin, that's where the risk lies for health care workers," he said.
There are protocols for contacting the local health department or the CDC to discuss a potential Ebola patient and determine if the patient is high risk. "If the patient is at high risk, the CDC or health department will ask for certain blood tests," he said. "You hold off on blood work until you talk with the health department or CDC, to limit the amount of needle pricks and possible exposure."
There also are protocols for moving an Ebola patient through the hospital; limiting visitors; cleaning equipment, and properly disposing of dirty linens and body waste.
"Hospitals with good infectious disease control programs in place will find this much easier to accomplish," he said. "A lot of this is just enhancement to what we do fairly routinely."
Guttenberg believes that about 50% of the nation's 4,500-5,000 hospitals are prepared to handle a single Ebola patient. "Very, very few of them could handle multiple patients," he said.
The fact that Dallas health care worker Nina Pham contracted Ebola even though she wore protective gear while treating Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person diagnosed with the deadly disease in the USA, is spurring demands for better training of health care workers and prompting calls for all U.S. Ebola patients to be cared for at one of the nation's four specially designed hospitals with biocontainment units.
But officials from two of those facilities say the super-hospitals won't be able to handle all future Ebola patients. Every hospital in the USA needs to be prepared to diagnose and treat patients with Ebola, said Bruce Ribner, medical director of the infectious disease unit at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta,which treated the first two Ebola patients in the USA, who contracted the disease in West Africa.
"It's not going to be possible, if this outbreak continues in West Africa, for a select number of institutions to care for patients," Ribner said.
Altogether, those four hospitals can accommodate just 8-13 patients, said Phil Smith, medical director of the biocontainment unit at Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, which has treated a U.S. missionary and is treating a television news cameraman, both of whom contracted the virus in West Africa. He said Nebraska has 1-2 Ebola beds, Emory 2 beds, St. Patrick Hospital in Montana 1-2 beds and the National Institutes of Health in Maryland 4-7 beds. "But I don't know if they (NIH) have the staffing," he said.
Smith said the U.S. State Department decides which patients get beds at the four biocontainment units.
The nation's largest nurses' organization says most registered nurses at hospitals around the USA have not been given adequate training to handle an Ebola patient. Many hospitals have been slow to provide the proper training because it's expensive, said Charles Idelson, spokesman for National Nurses United, which has 185,000 members.
"Part of the problem with relying on the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) is that they don't have an enforcement mechanism," he said. "What we see happening is the CDC can issue a thousand guidelines, but hospitals can choose to follow or not follow whatever guidelines they want. That's been a major roadblock to developing a national coordinated response to Ebola. For weeks, we heard assurances that the hospitals were prepared."
But he says his group's survey of more than 2,100 registered nurses at more than 750 facilities in 46 states and Washington, D.C., found that just 15% had received Ebola education where nurses had the ability to interact and ask questions. "What's happening is they're being given a CDC handout and directed to the CDC's website," he said.
The Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, which represents more than 2,000 physicians and other health care professionals, says the current Ebola outbreak "illustrates the need for increased funding for hospital epidemiology and infection prevention programs worldwide. ... The complexity of ensuring 100% adherence to infection control practices, particularly around personal protective equipment (PPE), points to the need for improved training of health care workers across all practice settings."
Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey, a Democrat, is calling for additional funding for a hospital preparedness program that has been cut by 50% since 2003. "We have to ensure that hospitals and medical facilities have the resources they need to protect public health," Casey said.
CDC director Thomas Frieden said Monday that the agency will "work with hospitals throughout the country to 'Think Ebola' in someone with a fever or other symptoms who has had travel to any of the three (West African) countries in the previous 21 days."
"We will be looking over the coming days at how we can increase training and increase training materials and availability, most urgently for the health care workers caring for the patient in Dallas, but also more generally throughout our health care system."
It's important for hospitals across the nation to be prepared and equipped to handle a potential Ebola patient because people on flights from Africa can end up in many U.S. cities, Smith said. "Every hospital, even small hospitals, have to have a plan in place to deal with a person who may just show up," he said.
He and other experts say that prepping to treat Ebola patients is costly. "I don't know the cost, except it's going to be expensive," Smith said. "Even for a smaller hospital, you need (an Ebola) dedicated staff, special nurses, a special area with a closed door between the surrounding area. Special security. Special waste handling. Every hospital that commits to prepare is going to have to spend a fair amount of money."
Ambreen Khalil, an infectious disease specialist at Staten Island University Hospital in Staten Island, N.Y., says the hospital is in the process of changing its protocol for removing PPEs. "Our protocols now require someone to observe removal of the equipment," she said. "If you don't peel it off very systematically, like layer by layer, and ensure your skin does not ever make contact with the garment, if you don't do that, you can still get Ebola.
"It is definitely challenging," she said.
Michael Guttenberg, chairman of emergency medicine at Forest Hills Hospital in Forest Hills, N.Y., said the most critical step in preparing for an Ebola patient is having a gatekeeper who can recognize such a person. "They have to have in place a person for identifying people who are potentially at risk," he said. "Essentially, they have to have at the front door a mechanism to identify patients who may be at risk."
In addition, hospitals have to partner with emergency medical services in their community so EMS workers can identify at-risk patients before they arrive at the emergency room. There are additional protocols: ensuring the safety of staff, visitors and patients; setting up an isolation room, and training staff in putting on and taking off the personal protective equipment worn when interacting with an Ebola patient.
Guttenberg said that removing the gear, especially, is a precise, exacting process that can take 6-10 minutes. "If there's any soiling of the outer garment, and if they remove it incorrectly and the outer garment comes into contact with their mucous membranes or their skin, that's where the risk lies for health care workers," he said.
There are protocols for contacting the local health department or the CDC to discuss a potential Ebola patient and determine if the patient is high risk. "If the patient is at high risk, the CDC or health department will ask for certain blood tests," he said. "You hold off on blood work until you talk with the health department or CDC, to limit the amount of needle pricks and possible exposure."
There also are protocols for moving an Ebola patient through the hospital; limiting visitors; cleaning equipment, and properly disposing of dirty linens and body waste.
"Hospitals with good infectious disease control programs in place will find this much easier to accomplish," he said. "A lot of this is just enhancement to what we do fairly routinely."
Guttenberg believes that about 50% of the nation's 4,500-5,000 hospitals are prepared to handle a single Ebola patient. "Very, very few of them could handle multiple patients," he said.
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