16 Members of Doctors Without Borders Infected with Ebola, Nine Dead

[Purveyor]

Source: Associated Press

LYNSEY CHUTEL, Associated Press | | Tuesday, October 14, 2014

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — International aid organization Doctors Without Borders said that 16 of its staff members have been infected with Ebola and nine of them have died.

Speaking at a press conference in Johannesburg Tuesday, the head of Doctors Without Borders in South Africa Sharon Ekambaram said medical workers have received inadequate assistance from the international community.

"Where is WHO Africa? Where is the African Union?" said Ekambaram who 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."

Four of the organization's medical workers who had just returned from Sierra Leone and Liberia said they were frustrated, "chasing after the curve of the outbreak," according to Jens Pederson, the aid organization's humanitarian affairs adviser.

Read more: http://www.jems.com/article/news/16-members-doctors-without-borders-infec

[840high]

1. So sad.

[ZombieHorde]

2. Courageous. nt

[Mnemosyne]

3. This is so heartbreaking to learn.

[jtuck004]

4. Why is it when a nurse contracts Ebola in Dallas it's all about how she broke protocol, but

doctors doing the same job are called heroes when they get infected?

[Demit]

6. Maybe b/c it's different people who made the statements?

[jtuck004]

7. Wow, deep. Bye. n/t

[Demit]

14. Haha! You wanted to whine about something, apparently,

without going to the trouble of being logical about it. And now you're going away because someone noticed? Aww.

[librechik]

69. LOL--I could be wrong, but I believe you were being told YOU

would be going away. On ignore, or perhaps even tombstoned.

welcome to DU!

[sinkingfeeling]

9. Maybe it's because a Dallas hospital compared to the hospital conditions

that Doctors without Borders work in, is like a trillion dollars compared to a dime.

Does this look like the Dallas hospital to you?

[kestrel91316]

20. [phone] 000

[Historic NY]

34. K&R...

They are trying but why isn't anyone going the mile for them. The US went in and scooped up a few American Dr's. Where is the rest of the world? And where are those robot machines?


https://www.yahoo.com/tech/using-pulses-of-ultraviolet-light-this-robot-99994467129.html

[ReRe]

58. Wow!

This is the first I've heard of this GiGi ebola-killing machine.

[Warpy]

36. They follow far stricter protocols in Africa

and still DWB docs and nurses are getting the disease.

I don't think the nurse broke protocols. I do think the protocols here are inadequate.

[LiberalArkie]

44. I think the odds come into play here. Let's see you have the meds in Africa treating hundreds

of patients and a small percentage of the medical staff get sick, verses in one hospital in the U.S. you have the Medical staff treating 1 patient and 1 nurse gets sick.. I would say that the staff in Africa is doing a hell of a job with what little they have to work with. It would be interesting to see what they could do if the had the resources and money that was spent on the patients in the U.S.

[LisaL]

45. Doctors without borders have really good infection control.

Look at the image. Whatever other conditions are, PPEs are much more stringent than the ones used in Dallas hospital (which followed CDC guidelines). CDC guidelines did not call for a hazmat suit, or even a head cover.

[LiberalArkie]

48. I think the CDC's protocols were left over from swine flu etc.

The protocols were probably written by doctors that used the BL4 suits or better.

[Warpy]

46. In one way, it would be worse here

because sunlight kills the virus and our medical facilities are all closed to it.

[Warpy]

83. The suits retain lawyers and budget for lawsuits

that come when their short staffing policies cause injury or death to patients.

Suits need to get the hell out of our hospitals. They need to be run by doctors, nurses, and even businesspeople who started out as doctors or nurses.

Suits know how to run supermarket chains and fast food franchise outfits. They're deadly when they get into hospitals.

[deurbano]

70. "Texas Ebola Cases Prompt CDC to Adopt Stricter Guidelines"

I posted this in another thread. CDC protocol is being updated, but may not go far enough. (Still not as strict as the Doctors Without Borders protocol... )

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-15/texas-ebola-cases-prompt-cdc-to-adopt-stricter-guidelines.html

"Texas Ebola Cases Prompt CDC to Adopt Stricter Guidelines"
By Makiko Kitamura Oct 15, 2014 5:51 AM PT

<< The spread of Ebola in a Texas hospital is exposing inadequate protection measures for nurses and doctors, spurring U.S. officials to adopt more stringent guidelines. The new advice still falls short of what the aid group with the most Ebola experience advises.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention yesterday disclosed measures designed to better protect health workers that more closely resemble protocol used by Doctors Without Borders on the frontlines of the outbreak in West Africa. Workers at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas must now wear hoods that cover their necks and wash their hands in a specific sequence when they remove protective gear, the CDC said in a statement....

...The aid group Doctors Without Borders has always required gear that doesn’t expose any area of skin as well as hand-washing in between removal of each item of protective equipment for workers dealing with Ebola patients.

Even with the recent revisions, the CDC guidelines aren’t stringent enough, according to MacIntyre.

The updated advice suggests the second glove can be removed by hooking a bare finger under it, risking contact with a potentially contaminated surface, and doesn’t mention protective boots at all, she said. Doctors Without Borders requires two pairs of gloves, while the CDC only mentions one.>>

[BobbyBoring]

78. I think you're right.

What's happening on the ground is different than what we were originally told.
This is truly sad though. If only our elected "officials" took their oaths as seriously as DWB, things would be way different.

[LisaL]

42. Doctors without borders have better PPE.

Hazmat suit, no exposed skin whatsoever.

[OnlinePoker]

13. The article says they're staff...not necessarily doctors.

What I don't like about the article is only one lead paragraph talks about the deaths and gives no details. The rest of the article talks about inadequate support for the medical teams.

[QuestionAlways]

15. The difference

"When a nurse contracts Ebola in Dallas it's all about how she broke protocol" because they are covering their butts. They are afraid to admit it is possible that the virus has mutated and has become more infectious.

[kestrel91316]

18. If it had, there would be a lot more people in Texas with it.

[jtuck004]

27. That's another possibility, thank you. Also, the people who are making the most $$$ from this aren't

really being discussed. Are they pushing these nurses to work less hours, replacing their co-workers with cheaper help and expecting the same results, etc.? Most hospitals are reportedly doing that, along with cheaper and less expensive (and less educated workers) facilitates springing up on many street corners. At least in white neighborhoods where, at least, they used to be middle-class.

The first things I read, including from the CDC, blamed the nurse for taking off a glove wrong or something. Seems like it would be better to start from a wider perspective in the discussion, especially after seeing nurses standing in labor lines across the country, and seeing hospital floors staffed by more and more people with barely a CPR card.

The reason for that is, if it was just a worker bee screwing up, they can keep making their profits while you and your family die. If the problem is wider, and perhaps involves the facility or people you will be seeing...

...and make no mistake, there is a very high chance that you will be visiting with a health care professional about this in the next year or so...

...then it would be of significant value to discuss the real cause as to why a nurse, anywhere, might be expected to get the job done, without profit-sucking time spent washing hands and other tasks that cannot be billed to a patient. Because they are.

Might be worth your life, or your kid or neighbor.

[Skittles]

35. is this the latest Fox News talking point?

[Warpy]

37. It's not an upper respiratory disease

It has to be spread through direct contact with an infected person.

"The nurse broke protocol" is a bunch of suits covering their asses because they know protocols are inadequate and that it's going to cost money to make them adequate.

[Hoppy]

38. Or, they don't want to admit that the protocol was incorrect or not communicated.

[Arkana]

81. And soon Herr Obama will carpet bomb us with Ebola infected towels.

And you'll all be forced into Agenda 21 concentration camps, where you'll be forced to gay marry abortions.

[QuestionAlways]

82. Not being critical of anyone

but virus do mutate and above all the government does want to prevent a panic.

[Voice for Peace]

17. Doctors Without Borders don't have access to the same kind of facilities and money as US hospitals.

[whatthehey]

21. maybe it's because

she was in a top flight modern hospital in a major US city, surrounded by western hygiene, not in a tent in an impoverished rural region in Sieera Leone where clean water is rare and the general populace hug their dead as a cultural norm?

[jtuck004]

22. Maybe because it's easier to beat up on workers, and women. n/t

[blackcrowflies]

40. no evidence she broke protocol

the clown who said that apologized.

Not only does the person have to follow protocol but a coworker watches to make sure they do. Hard to slip up in those circumstances.

[Windy]

57. No, its very easy to inadvertantly slip up

I worked with HIV patients as a respiratory therapist when the disease was first beginning to be seen in the US. The patients were in full isolation. We had to gown, double glove and mask with shoe covers. When I would suction the poor souls who were on a ventilator, the mucous/blood would fly everywhere at times, depending on whether they coughed during suctioning. We also had to drain the ventilator condensation (full of sputum) several times per shift. My gown and gloves and sometime mask (standard surgical mask), became contaminated. Trying to get all the protective gear off without getting anything on your skin whatsoever was next to impossible. I would use hibiclens profusely after getting everything off. Of course back then we gowned and gloved to protect the patient with the comprised immune system and not for the protection of the staff. Things have changed the more that was learned about HIV and now face shields and full infectious disease precautions are in place for medical staff in ER/Surgery where HIV status may be unknown. Having said all of that, it is very possible that even when using the utmost care, you could still get some sort of contaminant on your skin. If you have a break in the skin, the ebola virus or any virus/disease for that matter(hepatitis etc) could enter your system.

[IronLionZion]

43. I call the nurse a hero too

because her intentions were to help someone even though it put herself in danger. There are many others who agree.

[Paper Roses]

5. Doctors without Borders is a wonderful organization.

Lack of support for them is inexcusable. If they needed guns, not medicine and other supplies, I bet some big businesses would rush in with AK47's and other military aid.

[Initech]

12. My brother is a member and been on missions.

We're pleading him not to go to West or South Africa right now.

[QuestionAlways]

24. +1000 nt

[Leith]

62. They Are a Dedicated and Courageous Group of People

The world needs more like them. Heck, we need everyone to be like them.

[Dollface]

11. Too bad they aren't getting Zuckerburg's $25 million donation.

https://donate.doctorswithoutborders.org/onetime.cfm

If you can spare some bucks

[Wait Wut]

30. Thank you.

I can't afford it today, but I've "Liked" them on FB so I can remember to donate in the near future. I don't know why I didn't think of this before.

[IronLionZion]

47. Good call

Thanks for sharing that link.

[ReRe]

59. Thank you, thank you, thank you...

... for adding that link to their website. I donate to them regularly via mail. I encourage everyone to support them. And I agree with you about Zuckerburg. All of the filthy rich the world over need to come out of the woodwork and support Doctors Without Borders, & donate funds to build proper hospitals to handle e-bola throughout west Africa.

[kestrel91316]

16. It's all Frieden and CDC's fault.

[former9thward]

23. Frieden and the CDC will be blaming them for "not following protocol".

And that is not sarcasm.

[kestrel91316]

28. I doubt it. They, unlike you, seem to be aware of the impossible working conditions

on the ground in West Africa.

[former9thward]

32. He was quick to blame the nurse in Dallas.

I would love to see him treat an Ebola patient. Show us how its done, hero.

[kestrel91316]

61. Well, you start by using proper PPE and then following CDC protocols.

Nobody followed any protocols. The hospital completely ignored all CDC advisories and guidelines and failed to train staff and did the opposite of what they were supposed to do pretty much from Day One. Because "we don't need no stinkin' commie CDC elitists tellin' us how to take care of sick n-----s", presumably.

This private hospital is a reeking mass of clusterfucks piled high and deep. Deregulation of medical care run amok.

Every last one of the 70 people involved in Duncan's care "broke protocol" because there WAS no protocol. It was a complete free-for-all.

Frieden was being VERY charitable when he said what he did. And now I know why he sounded scared to me in one of the early press conferences. He already suspected the hospital was screwing up royally and innocent people would pay with their lives.

If they violated sanitary procedures as badly as it sounds like they did based on the nurses' statements to the union, that hospital needs to be taken over by the feds immediately, shut down, evacuated, all contents burned, and the place disinfected with flame throwers.

And somebody needs to spend the rest of their life in prison for this.

[former9thward]

72. As I said I want to see Frieden treat an ebola patient.

Instead of giving pronouncements from his comfortable office in Atlanta. If you think hospitals have been "deregulated" it proves you know nothing about hospitals.

[pnwmom]

60. Dr. Frieden: "Looking back, we say we should have put an even larger team on the ground immediately"

No, it's not all the CDC's fault. But they share some of the blame.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/ebola-response-prevented-nurses-case-cdc-head/story?id=26195521

Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said that from now on a "CDC Ebola response team" will be ready to reach a hospital "within hours" of a reported case of Ebola.

"I wish we had put a team like this on the ground the day the first patient was diagnosed. That might have prevented infection," Frieden said at a news conference today. "We will do that from today onward with any case in the U.S."

SNIP

The CDC could have sent a "more robust management team and been more hands on from day one," Frieden said. "Looking back, we say we should have put an even larger team on the ground immediately."

SNIP

[kestrel91316]

19. Really really really hoping the vaccine trials show it to be safe AND effective.

And that they are making it as fast as they possible can.

[jwirr]

25. Hopefully the blood transfusions will be found to work. I know that they need more money to

help with the actual epidemic but I am hoping that some of the rich will be donating to find a cure. That needs money also.

[RussBLib]

26. so why can't any of the US billionaires help them out?

I know there must be a lot of demands on the poor billionaire's time (and money), but how about giving to some urgent causes now and then? Seems like it's always left up to us little guys with marginal extra cash.

[Paper Roses]

29. Good point.. n/t

[Wait Wut]

31. Because Doctor's Without Borders...

...isn't a political party. They'll get the scraps.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

33. they'll help...

If they can use it as a tax shelter.

[genxlib]

39. Tragic

I was in Haiti after the earthquake and witnessed this group first hand.

Ever since then, they have been my number one charity to support.

It takes a special kind of person to leave a first world upper class life behind in exchange for a life of service in the third world. True heroes.

It breaks my heart that they are becoming victims. Not only is it tragic to see heroes suffer, it has a chilling affect on others willing to help.

These people deserve more support. I wish I was rich.

[MountainMama]

41. When the ice bucket thing

When the Ice Bucket thing got real popular, I was challenged. I felt uncomfortable participating, for all the reasons you've probably heard already.

I decided to donate my funds to DWB. And now......I'm glad I did and hope to be able to do so again, soon.

Whenever people talk about a disaster....I always recommend donating to them instead of whoever else pops up.

[Yve55]

49. Greetings from Puerto Rico

This is indeed very tragic and sad for everyone infected with this eboli virus

[rocktivity]

50. Welcome To DU!

rocktivity

[Yve55]

56. Thanks!!

Hi rocktivity back to ya

[El Shaman]

52. Bienvenida/o

Yve, por parte de los Tejanos.

[Yve55]

55. Muchas Gracias

Saludos desde La Isla del Encanto!

[El Shaman]

51. At this rate

we will, surely, lose.

[whereisjustice]

53. There's more money to be made curing the erectile dysfunction of Wall Street CEOs. eom

[LynneSin]

54. Even though Ebola is not airborne it is so easy to pass in poor conditions

When a patient has full blown Ebola, ever opening of their body is spewing out gunk - blood, puke, feces, sweat - and that is all filled with live Ebola looking for a new host.

The Doctors and Nurses over there do have Hazmat suits but they are tired and the sanitation isn't as perfect as a laboratory setting. So there is always a chance that somehow that Virus gets through the protection. Perhaps there is a cut in the suit. Perhaps the Clorox shower didn't kill everything on the outside of the Hazmat suit. There's just to much what-ifs going on over there. And with these doctors & nurses overworked and tired these things happen.

I hope more people like Mark Zuckerberg step up with some big donations. There needs to be more protection, better sanitation and more doctors to ensure that the people helping the sick do not get exhausted and overlook safety procedures that keep them from getting infected.

[LovingA2andMI]

64. Viruses MUTATE....

So we need to slow our roles with believing carte' blanche what the CDC or any other so-called Health Care Organization are "Telling Us'.

To the point, how exactly do we know the virus is not airborne? This virus has mutated to a point where workers employed with Doctors Without Boarders --- who worked with the Virus in West Africa for YEARS without being inflected themselves-- are not only bring inflected but are also DYING as a result.

With such, we really need to stop with repeating the lines threw out about the CDC about this Ebola virus in America and HOPE this outbreak is ceased soon -- or in our band-aid privatized healthcare system WE ARE ALL AT RISK.

"JOHANNESBURG (AP) — International aid organization Doctors Without Borders said that 16 of its staff members have been infected with Ebola and nine of them have died.

Speaking at a press conference in Johannesburg Tuesday, the head of Doctors Without Borders in South Africa Sharon Ekambaram said medical workers have received inadequate assistance from the international community.

"Where is WHO Africa? Where is the African Union?" said Ekambaram who 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."

Four of the organization's medical workers who had just returned from Sierra Leone and Liberia said they were frustrated, "chasing after the curve of the outbreak," according to Jens Pederson, the aid organization's humanitarian affairs adviser."

Read more: http://www.jems.com/article/news/16-members-doctors-without-borders-infec

[LynneSin]

67. I agree about our healthcare system in the states

I have said long ago that we need to shut down all flight heading out of the 3 countries with the highest infection rate and only allow flights out after we are ensured that the people leaving are not infected. Think about it - the nations surrounding those 3 countries have not had outbreaks and the reason why - they have all shut down their borders. Senegal got one case of Ebola and then they shut down their common border with Guinea. They knew better.

But these makeshift hospitals where the sick are being treated is - they aren't working. The virus is passed via body fluid - every single type of body fluid imaginable. And in the late stages of Ebola a patient has fluids coming out everywhere, even in their sweat it's teeming with Ebola virus. So you have to assume that anything someone touches in that room probably has been contaminate with Ebola because even if the the virus isn't technically 'airborne' you can imagine that someone is vomiting that some of that stuff goes flying. Sneezing some of that could go flying. There is body fluid flying all over the place. That means every inch of those hazmats suits are covered with body fluids that are contaminated.

With not enough doctors and staff, the ones over there are exhausted and mistakes are made. It's too easy to accidentally touch something contaminated - an area that wasn't heavily cleaned with Clorox to ensure the bugger is dead.

These countries are not tourist destination nor are they global business hubs. Shut down flights. The neighboring countries are already securing borders (and do you think someone sick with Ebola is going to be able to walk cross country to get out?). Then drop some serious cash over in West Africa to get enough money for equipment, sanitation and help to fight this disease properly.

[LovingA2andMI]

68. Agree with ALL of your points made....

Shutting down completely flights to the United States coming from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea is beyond necessary at this point. If the USA or CDC fail to lobby an immediate flight ban from these counties, they are in cohort with spreading this plague across the world.

Also, although this is a blog type article, the point made within the piece could be valid and is VERY concerning....

"Most people assume that the fourteenth-century Black Death that quickly ravaged the western world was a bacterial bubonic plague epidemic caused by flea bites and spread by rats.

But the Black Death killed a high proportion of Scandinavians where it was too cold for fleas to survive. Biology of Plagues. Evidence from Historical Populations published by Cambridge University Press, analyzed 2,500 years of plagues and concluded that the Black Death was caused by a viral hemorrhagic fever pandemic similar to Ebola. If this is correct, the future medical and economic impacts from Ebola have been vastly underestimated.

Authors Dr. Susan Scott, a demographer, and Dr. Christopher J. Duncan, a zoologist at the University of Liverpool point out that the Bible used the term “plague” to describe a catchall of afflictions resulting from divine displeasure.

The researchers analyzed the “Four Ages of Plague”, including the “Plague of Athens” from 430 to 427 BC that killed about a third of the city; the “Plague of Justinian” from 542 to 592 AD and killed 10,000 a day in Constantinople; the Black Plague from 1337 to 1340 AD that killed a third of Eurasia; and a series of plague outbreaks in Europe from 1350 to 1670 that killed about half a number of city populations.

Historical records of the Athenian plague paint a very similar picture to the Black Death and the accelerating Ebola pandemic. Like Ebola, the plague is believed to have originated in Africa and then travelled northward.

Athenians suffered a sudden onset of severe headache, inflamed eyes, and bleeding in their mouths and throats. The next symptoms were coughing, sneezing, and chest pains; followed by stomach cramps, intensive vomiting and diarrhea, and unquenchable thirst. With flushed skin burning from fever and open sores, 50-90% died in the second week of symptoms.

Desperate to cool off, contagious victims may have transmitted the disease to other humans by jumping into public cisterns and watering troughs.

Bubonic plague was first recorded in China about 37 AD and still is a worldwide public health problem with thousands of cases each year. The most recent outbreak was in the Chinese city of Yumen on July 22, 2014, where a man died after handling a dead marmot. The Chinese military responded by quarantining 30,000 local residents."

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/10/is_ebola_the_same_virus_as_the_black_death.html#ixzz3GDkuP9ul

[LynneSin]

75. When I say shut down - it can't be USA only

It has to be everywhere. I know there are people in that region who need to get out - perhaps there is a way to quarantine them and if they show to be symptom free then they can return to their home country.

Total Shutdown.

Like I said - these are not countries that are vacation destinations or global business hubs. I can't these airports have the type of traffic you'd fine in NYC or Paris or even Johannesburg South Africa. The largest country is Guinea and that's the 26th largest. BTW in August, Guinea closed it's borders to Sierra Leone and Liberia and that's some huge borders there.

Nice article

[LovingA2andMI]

79. Fair Point!

[Marrah_G]

74. Yes they mutate, but they do not do so as to completely change the mode of transmission

[LovingA2andMI]

77. That's not True....

"When viruses enter a cell, they make copies of their genetic information to assemble new virus particles. Viruses such as Ebola virus, which have genetic information in the form of RNA (not DNA as in other organisms), are notoriously bad at copying their genome. The viral enzyme that copies the RNA makes many errors, perhaps as many as one or two each time the viral genome is reproduced. There is no question that RNA viruses are the masters of mutation. This fact is in part why we need a new influenza virus vaccine every few years.

The more hosts infected by a virus, the more mutations will arise. Not all of these mutations will find their way into infectious virus particles because they cause lethal defects. But Osterholm’s statement that the evolution of Ebola virus is ‘unprecedented’ is simply not correct. It is only what we know. The virus was only discovered to infect humans in 1976, but it surely infected humans long before that. Furthermore, the virus has been replicating, probably for millions of years, in an animal reservoir, possibly bats. There has been ample opportunity for the virus to undergo mutation.

More problematic is Osterholm’s assumption that mutation of Ebola virus will give rise to viruses that can transmit via the airborne route:

If certain mutations occurred, it would mean that just breathing would put one at risk of contracting Ebola. Infections could spread quickly to every part of the globe, as the H1N1 influenza virus did in 2009, after its birth in Mexico.

The key phrase here is ‘certain mutations’. We simply don’t know how many mutations, in which viral genes, would be necessary to enable airborne transmission of Ebola virus, or if such mutations would even be compatible with the ability of the virus to propagate. What allows a virus to be transmitted through the air has until recently been unknown. We can’t simply compare viruses that do transmit via aerosols (e.g. influenza virus) with viruses that do not (e.g. HIV-1) because they are too different to allow meaningful conclusions.

One approach to this conundrum would be to take a virus that does not transmit among mammals by aerosols – such as avian influenza H5N1 virus – and endow it with that property. This experiment was done by Fouchier and Kawaoka several years ago, and revealed that multiple amino acid changes are required to allow airborne transmission of H5N1 virus among ferrets. These experiments were met with a storm of protest from individuals – among them Michael Osterholm – who thought they were too dangerous. Do you want us to think about airborne transmission, and do experiments to understand it – or not?

The other important message from the Fouchier-Kawaoka ferret experiments is that the H5N1 virus that could transmit through the air had lost its ability to kill. The message is clear: gain of function (airborne transmission) is accompanied by loss of function (virulence)."

http://www.virology.ws/2014/09/18/what-we-are-not-afraid-to-say-about-ebola-virus/

[Marrah_G]

80. It has never happened and is unlikely to ever happen.

[aquart]

63. Shit.

[LovingA2andMI]

66. Exactly!

If this outbreak is not put under control SOON -- WE ARE SCREWED. Our band-aid privatized Health Care System in America where it is a mix of For-Profit/Non For-Profit and Just Cut Corners to Save Greenbacks "Healthcare" cannot handle the stress or proper protocols necessary to reduce infection of humans in the event of a full scale outbreak.

We need to WAKE UP and SMELL the COFFEE. The update by the National Nurses United Union is just the tip of the Iceberg

"The Texas hospital where two health care workers contracted Ebola while caring for a patient had guidelines that were "constantly changing" and didn't have protocols on how to deal with the deadly virus," a nurses' union claims.

"The protocols that should have been in place in Dallas were not in place, and that those protocols are not in place anywhere in the United States as far as we can tell," National Nurses United Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro said Tuesday night. "We're deeply alarmed."

Officials from National Nurses United declined to specify how many nurses they had spoken with, nor identify them to to protect them from possible retaliation. The nurses at the hospital are not members of a union, officials said.

Here's a look at some of the allegations the nurses made, according to the union:

Claim: Duncan wasn't immediately isolated

On the day that Duncan was admitted to the hospital with possible Ebola symptoms, he was "left for several hours, not in isolation, in an area where other patients were present," union co-president Deborah Burger said.

Up to seven other patients were present in that area, the nurses said, according to the union.

A nursing supervisor faced resistance from hospital authorities when the supervisor demanded that Duncan be moved to an isolation unit, the nurses said, according to the union.

Perry heads to Europe despite Ebola situation

Claim: The nurses' protective gear left their necks exposed

After expressing concerns that their necks were exposed even as they wore protective gear, the nurses were told to wrap their necks with medical tape, the union says.

"They were told to use medical tape and had to use four to five pieces of medical tape wound around their neck. The nurses have expressed a lot of concern about how difficult it is to remove the tape from their neck," Burger said.

Claim: At one point, hazardous waste piled up

"There was no one to pick up hazardous waste as it piled to the ceiling," Burger said. "They did not have access to proper supplies."

Claim: Nurses got no "hands-on" training

"There was no mandate for nurses to attend training," Burger said, though they did receive an e-mail about a hospital seminar on Ebola.

"This was treated like hundreds of other seminars that were routinely offered to staff," she said.

Claim: The nurses "feel unsupported"

So why did the group of nurses -- the union wouldn't say how many -- contact the nursing union, which they don't belong to?

According to DeMoro, the nurses were upset after authorities appeared to blame nurse Pham, who has contracted Ebola, for not following protocols.

"This nurse was being blamed for not following protocols that did not exist. ... The nurses in that hospital were very angry, and they decided to contact us," DeMoro said.

And they're worried conditions at the hospital "may lead to infection of other nurses and patients," Burger said.

A hospital spokesman did not respond to the specific allegations, but said patient and employee safety is the hospital's top priority.

"We take compliance very seriously. We have numerous measures in place to provide a safe working environment, including mandatory annual training and a 24-7 hotline and other mechanisms that allow for anonymous reporting," hospital spokesman Wendell Watson said.

Concern grows about the spread of Ebola

The Dallas mayor declined to comment on the accusations against the hospital.

"I don't comment on anonymous allegations," Mike Rawlings said.

But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a statement following the union's claims.

"For health care workers in Dallas and elsewhere, the Ebola situation is extremely difficult," CDC spokeman Tom Skinner wrote.

"The CDC is committed to their safety, and we'll continue to do everything possible to make sure they have what they need so they can prepare to safely manage Ebola patients."

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/15/health/texas-ebola-nurses-union-claims/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

[Le Taz Hot]

65. Government budgets have been slashed

and most can't contribute the money or resources that are needed. So, since the 1% owns 40% of this country maybe they could think about donating some of those billions to Ebola? I know Zuckerberg donated $25 million which was generous but is only a very small portion of what is needed. Do these people really think their money will insulate them if this goes pandemic?

[LovingA2andMI]

71. They (The Rich) will contract vendors to build isolation units immediately

for protecting them and the "Little People" would be left to fend for themselves.....

[Sunlei]

73. These people are Heros, they're always on the 'front lines'.

If Doctors without Borders has trouble keeping up with "the curve of the outbreak" it must be very bad.

Here are their press releases about Ebola. http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/news-stories/press/press-releases

[Faux pas]

76. Kickin'

That's a huge loss for the world.