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 As an outbreak of the deadly virus spread beyond West Africa,
hospitals and nursing associations across the United States were
taking a closer look at how prepared they were to handle such
infections.
"We have to rethink the way we address Ebola infection control. Even
a single infection is unacceptable," Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of
the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told reporters.
"The care of Ebola is hard. We're working to make it safer and
easier."
Frieden said health authorities are still investigating how the
nurse became infected while caring for Thomas Eric Duncan in an
isolation ward at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital.
Duncan died last week and the nurse is the first person to contract
the virus on U.S. soil, taking concerns about containing its spread
to new heights.
The infected nurse is Nina Pham, 26, according to a Sunday school
teacher at the church where her family worships and through a public
records check of her address. Attempts to reach her family were not
immediately successful.
The family was in shock when it learned the young woman had
contracted Ebola, said Tom Ha, a close friend of the Pham family who
is also a Bible studies teacher at the Our Lady of Fatima Catholic
Church in Fort Worth.
"The mother was crying, very upset," he told Reuters.
The Dallas nurse is "clinically stable," Frieden said, and the CDC
is monitoring others involved in Duncan's care in case they show
symptoms of the virus.
Pham has received a blood transfusion from a person who has survived
an Ebola infection, Dallas broadcasters WFAA and others reported,
citing Father Jim Khoi, who is Pham's priest.
A spokeswoman for Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas,
where the nurse is being treated, said she had no information on
this.
Meanwhile, the condition of freelance American cameraman Ashoka
Mukpo continued to improve at Nebraska Medical Center after he
received a blood transfusion from another patient who recovered from
Ebola.
Mukpo tweeted: "...feeling like I'm on the road to good health."
In another post, he said: "Now that I've had first hand exp with
this scourge of a disease, I'm even more pained at how little care
sick West Africans are receiving."
BREACH IN PROTOCOLS
Frieden also apologized for remarks on Sunday, when the nurse's
infection was first disclosed, that suggested she was responsible
for a breach in protocols that exposed her to the virus. Some
healthcare experts said the comments failed to address deep gaps in
training hospital staff to deal with Ebola.
"I'm sorry if that was the impression given," Frieden said. He said
the agency would take steps to increase the awareness of Ebola at
the nation's hospitals and training for staff.
The Texas Nurses Association defended Pham in a statement, saying it
was wrong to assume the nurse was to blame.
"The facts are not known about how the nurse in Dallas was exposed,"
the association stated. "It is incorrect to assume that the nurse
failed to follow protocols."
At his news conference, Frieden said some changes in procedures had
already been put into effect, including having staff monitor those
putting on and taking off protective gear, and retraining staff on
how to do so safely.
He said other steps were being considered including new types of
protective clothing and possibly spraying down staff with solutions
that could kill the virus if someone were to become contaminated.
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Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and
Infectious Diseases, said in an interview with ABC that officials
should consider sending Ebola patients only to a few "containment"
hospitals.
President Barack Obama was briefed by Frieden and senior members of
the administration about the second Dallas case and stressed that
“lessons learned” from the CDC’s investigation should be shared with
hospitals and healthcare workers across the country, the White House
said.
Obama also spoke separately with U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon
and with French President Francois Hollande about international
efforts to contain the outbreak and to provide treatment centers in
affected African nations.
A brief scare at Boston's Logan International Airport caused
emergency crews in protective gear to remove five passengers with
flu-like symptoms from Emirates flight 237 from Dubai, but the CDC
later said there was no Ebola threat.
In another incident, the University of Kansas Hospital said it was
conducting tests on a patient who had recently worked on a medical
boat off the west coast of Africa and who came into the hospital
with a high fever and other serious symptoms. It said the patient
had a "low to moderate risk" of having Ebola.
EBOLA WASTE A CONCERN
Meanwhile, Louisiana's top law enforcement official said he was
granted a temporary restraining order to prevent the personal items
of Duncan, who died on Wednesday, from being buried in a local
landfill after being incinerated.
Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell said material collected
from Duncan and the Dallas apartment where he was staying was taken
to Port Arthur, Texas, on Friday to be incinerated. From there the
incinerated material was to have gone to a hazardous waste landfill
in Louisiana.
"There are too many unknowns at this point, and it is absurd to
transport potentially hazardous Ebola waste across state lines,"
Caldwell said in a statement after the restraining order was
granted.
According to CDC guidelines, the Ebola virus does not survive on
materials that have been incinerated.
The current Ebola outbreak is the worst on record and has killed
more than 4,000 people, mostly in West Africa's Liberia, Sierra
Leone and Guinea. Duncan, a Liberian, was exposed to Ebola in his
home country and developed the disease while visiting the United
States.
Ebola, which can cause fever, vomiting and diarrhea, spreads through
contact with bodily fluids such as blood or saliva.
The infection of the Dallas nurse is the second known to have
occurred outside West Africa since the outbreak that began in March.
It follows that of a nurse's aide in Spain who helped treat a
missionary from Sierra Leone, who died of the virus.
(Additional reporting by Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago, Jonathan
Kaminsky in New Orleans, Marice Richter in Dallas and Roberta
Rampton in Washington; Writing by Ken Wills; Editing by Michele
Gershberg and Lisa Shumaker)
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