Ebola Is Here: Are We Crazy?
Ebola is serious and often fatal disease. Ebola is not airborne. It cannot be transmitted via coughs or sneezes. The virus spreads through direct contact of bodily fluids like saliva, sweat, stool, blood, urine and semen. It also can spread when the virus touches clothing, bed linen or needles, according to WHO. A person who is buried after dying of the disease is still contagious, and anyone who has contact with the corpse can get the virus. There is no specific treatment for Ebola. Doctors can only administer supportive therapy, which means supporting the patient’s own immune system as it tries to battle the infection. This supportive therapy for Ebola patients may also include blood or platelet transfusions and oxygen therapy. The first stage is characterized by fever, headaches, nausea, vomiting, a rash and diarrhea. The second however is haemorrhagic fever in which patients endure difficulty breathing and swallowing and bleeding inside their body. Blood pours out of their ears and nose and turns their eyes from white to red. They die an agonizing death. Generally patients who enter the second stage do not survive. There is no specific treatment for Ebola, and the National Institutes of Health will not be entering trial stages for a new vaccine until the fall. Doctors and nurses help control patients’ dehydration through intravenous fluids and keep them isolated from others.
The current outbreak in West Africa has already killed hundreds of people and has resulted in CDC issuing a travel advisory for three West African countries. Liberia has closed its borders to help stop the disease amid fears that it could spread after a patient suffering from Ebola took a flight to Lagos in Nigeria.
In a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention press briefing Thursday, July 31, Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the agency, says 50 staff members, including health communications experts and epidemiologists, are being sent to affected areas. While he stresses the virus shows little threat to the U.S., he says it is worsening in West Africa. “This is the largest most complex [Ebola] outbreak that we know if in history,” he says, adding that it may take as much as six months to contain. According to Frieden, about 10,000 people in the past three to four months have traveled from these countries to the U.S. — a number he says is tiny. Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., requested a travel ban in a Tuesday letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and Secretary of State John Kerry.
Now we are flying home two Ebola infected patients for treatment in the United States. Nancy Writebol and Dr. Kent Brantly are being flown to the U.S. inside isolation pods one by one, according to reports.
At least one of the Ebola victims will be treated in a super-high containment facility at Atlanta’s Emory University Hospital near the CDC. Emory University Hospital in Atlanta has confirmed that they will be taking one of the patients in the next several days after they arrive in the U.S. in a specially equipped jet. Inside the aircraft, the patients will remain in a tent-like structure called an aeromedical biological containment system, which allows officials to move highly contagious patients without fear of exposure to pathogens. Though it’s not certain how medical teams will transport the patient, he or she will likely be accompanied on the plane by a physician, nurse and four to six medics, according to U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases protocol. Medical personnel may wear impervious suits, hoods and vinyl boots, and communicate with the patient on two-way radios. On the jet, the patient will likely be put on a stretcher inside the sealed isolation tent with a HEPA-filtered ventilation system. Drugs or fluids are administered using a needle-less IV to avoid popping the plastic walls. For the same reason, no sharp tools are allowed.
It is not clear which of the two patients they will be housing or where the second patient will go. Emory and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is also based in Atlanta, have built a special containment unit to house the patient, who is in need of an extremely high level of isolation. Emory University Hospital physicians, nurses and staff are highly trained in the specific and unique protocols and procedures necessary to treat and care for this type of patient.
Some Americans are outraged over the decision to bring the disease to U.S. soil. After it emerged the two Americans were returning to their homeland for treatment, Twitter lit up with comments from Americans angry and frightened by the decision. Is there any reason for concern and outrage? Will bringing these two patients to the US endanger our citizens?
The risk of the Ebola virus making its way out of Africa into Europe, Asia or the Americas is extremely low, partly due to the severity of the disease and its deadly nature.The only case in which an Ebola case was known to have left Africa and made it to Europe via air travel was in 1994, when a Swiss zoologist became infected with the virus after dissecting a chimpanzee in Ivory Coast. The woman was isolated in a Swiss hospital and discharged after two weeks without infecting anyone else.
The risk of these two patients infecting their care givers or anyone else is extremely remote. Most US hospitals have specially built isolation units set up to treat patients who are exposed to certain serious infectious diseases. These facilities are physically separate from other patient areas of the hospital and equipped to provide an extremely high level of clinical isolation.
So relax, get off Twitter, and hope these two patients benefit from the excellent care they will be receiving. You have far greater communicable diseases to really worry about like flu, MERS, Meningococcal, and tuberculosis.
