Ebola and other Epidemics, Inadequate Healthcare Threatens Millions

[jimmy olsen]

Who's going to pay their bills in the mean time?

They will.  Or hell, maybe we could arrange for some assistance if needed.

So they go help the world fight a disease that kills 70-90% of people and they get rewarded with no paycheck for a month and locked up at home.

That'll sure encourage American doctors, nurses, and medics to work for MSF.

If they're that committed, they'll absorb the three week extra time off.  Anyway, whatever the impact on Africa, I think our policy should be to try to protect US citizens first.

The best way to protect America is to stamp out Ebola in Africa.

[Eddie Teach]

The best way to protect America is to stamp out Ebola in Africa.

Nah, we just close the ports and we're safe. 

[CountDeMoney]

Well, cause that was about impossible to quarantine.  By the time that strain of flu had been identified it was in already the the general population.  Ebola on the other hand is geographically limited and most importantly not at large in our country.  We can contain it, we can save a lot of lives.

Quit fucking up my meme gags, Rainman.

[jimmy olsen]

Super bad news.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/mali-case-infected-people-26433093

Home> Health
WHO: Mali Case Put Many at Risk for Ebola
BAMAKO, Mali — Oct 24, 2014, 5:10 PM ET
By BABA AHMED and SARAH DiLORENZO Associated Press


Many people in Mali are at high risk of catching Ebola because the toddler who brought the disease to the country was bleeding from her nose as she traveled on a bus from Guinea, the World Health Organization warned Friday.

The U.N. agency is treating the situation as an emergency since many people may have had "high-risk exposures" to the 2-year-old girl during her journey through several towns in Mali, including two hours in the capital, Bamako. The girl was traveling with her grandmother.

The toddler died while being treated at a hospital in the western city of Kayes on Friday, according to a statement from the Health Ministry read out on television.

This is the first Ebola case in Mali and may expand to many more. The case highlights how quickly the virus can hop borders and even oceans, just as questions are being asked about what precautions health care workers who treat Ebola patients should take when they return home from the hot zone. Doctors Without Borders insisted Friday, after one of its doctors who worked in Guinea came down with Ebola in New York, that quarantines of returning health workers are not necessary when they do not show symptoms of the disease.

In the Mali case, however, the girl was visibly sick, WHO said, and an initial investigation has identified 43 people, including 10 health workers, she came into close contact with who are being monitored for symptoms and held in isolation. The child was confirmed to have Ebola on Thursday.

"The child's symptomatic state during the bus journey is especially concerning, as it presented multiple opportunities for exposures — including high-risk exposures — involving many people," the agency said in a statement.

The girl first went to a clinic in Mali on Monday and she was initially treated for typhoid, which she tested positive for. When she did not improve, she was tested for Ebola.

Mali has long been considered highly vulnerable to Ebola's spread since it shares a border with the Ebola-hit countries of Guinea and Senegal, and staff from WHO and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were already there helping to prepare for a case. More WHO staff are being deployed.

The Ebola outbreak began in Guinea and has since spread to five other West African countries. The virus has also been imported to Spain and the United States. On Thursday, Craig Spencer, who had been working with Doctors Without Borders in Guinea and returned home to the U.S. about a week before, reported a fever and is now being treated at a New York hospital.

Some countries have banned travelers from the three main Ebola countries — Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone — and the U.S. started health screening of travelers arriving from there. But Doctors Without Borders said having its staffers quarantine themselves after leaving a country with Ebola is going too far if no symptoms are evident. A person infected with Ebola is not contagious until he or she starts showing symptoms.

"As long as a returned staff member does not experience any symptoms, normal life can proceed," Doctors Without Borders said in a statement sent to The Associated Press on Friday. "Self-quarantine is neither warranted nor recommended when a person is not displaying Ebola-like symptoms."

[Razgovory]

Well, cause that was about impossible to quarantine.  By the time that strain of flu had been identified it was in already the the general population.  Ebola on the other hand is geographically limited and most importantly not at large in our country.  We can contain it, we can save a lot of lives.

Quit fucking up my meme gags, Rainman.

Should have know Ebola was gag time with you.

[Eddie Teach]

Should have know Ebola was gag time with you.

What's wrong with a little gallows humor?

[Razgovory]

Seedy really needs to clarify between "gag time" and "ball-gag time".

[11B4V]

Seedy really needs to clarify between "gag time" and "ball-gag time".

It's usually quite apparent. 

[Martinus]

Well, at least it's a start. Have airport personnel  checking for signs of Ebola, though hospital staff are sometimes wrong. Besides, what if a person has Ebola but is not yet symptomatic?

Then it's basically's Schroeders Ebola.

Please tell me this is some joke I don't get and you just didnt confuse Schroedinger with Schroeder.

[Martinus]

Btw, how do you get medically untrained airport personnel tasked with checking thousands of people daily "look for signs of ebola" (which are essentially flu like) during the flu season? This sounds like the most moronic, disastrous idea I have heard in a long time but I could be missing something?

[garbon]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/27/nyregion/ebola-quarantine.html?_r=0

White House Presses States to Reconsider Mandatory Ebola Quarantine Orders

Te Obama administration has expressed deep concerns to the governors of New York and New Jersey and is consulting with them to modify their orders to quarantine medical volunteers returning from West Africa as President Obama seeks to quickly develop a new, nationwide policy for the workers, according to two senior administration officials.

One administration official said the federal government has been pressing the governors to back off their decisions, which quarantine all medical workers who had contact with Ebola patients. But another official said the administration has not specifically asked the governors to reverse their policies.

Mr. Obama held a meeting with his top advisers at the White House on Sunday as officials work to craft a policy that reassures Americans that they are protected from the virus while following the guidance of the government's scientific advisers. Officials said that policy will be ready in days and that the government would urge all states to follow it.

On Sunday both governors, Andrew M. Cuomo of New York and Chris Christie of New Jersey, stood by their decisions, saying that the current federal guidelines did not go far enough.

At the same time, the first person to be forced into isolation under the new protocols, Kaci Hickox, a nurse returning from Sierra Leone, planned to mount a legal challenge to the quarantine order. Despite having no symptoms, she has been kept under quarantine at a hospital in New Jersey, where she has been confined to a tent equipped with a portable toilet and no shower. On Sunday, she spoke to CNN about the way she has been treated, describing it as "inhumane."

The rapidly escalating events played out both privately, in intense negotiations and phone calls between federal and state officials, as well as publicly in Ms. Hickox's pointed criticism of the New Jersey governor.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Sunday that the way Ms. Hickox had been treated was shameful and vowed that New York City would do all it could to honor the work of the health care workers here and those who go help fight the epidemic in West Africa.

"The problem here is, this hero, coming back from the front having done the right things was treated with disrespect," Mr. de Blasio said.

"We have to think how we treat the people who are doing this noble work," he said. "We owe her better than that."

He said there have been reports that nurses who work at Bellevue have been stigmatized, with people refusing to serve them food or treating their children differently. Such behavior was unacceptable, he said.

"The people who work at Bellevue are the Marines of our health care system," he said. "They understand what their duty is, and they are only too proud to perform it."

Ever since Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, and Mr. Christie, a Republican, announced the plan at a hastily called news conference on Friday evening, top Obama administration officials have been speaking with Mr. Cuomo daily and have also been in touch with Mr. Christie, trying to get them to modify the order. But Mr. Christie said at a fund-raiser in Florida that he had "gotten absolutely no contact" from the White House.

But in that time, two more states — Illinois and Florida — announced that they were instituting similar policies, as some members of the public expressed outrage that the infected patient in New York City had used the subway and gone bowling just before developing symptoms.

Federal officials made it clear that they do not agree with the governors about the need or effectiveness of a total quarantine for health care workers, though they were careful not to directly criticize the governors themselves.

A senior administration official, who did not want to be identified in order to discuss private conversations with state officials on the issue, called the decision by the governors "uncoordinated, very hurried, an immediate reaction to the New York City case that doesn't comport with science."

Indeed, Mr. Christie said he did not consult with the White House about the decision. "I did not let them know," he said in a brief interview in Boca Raton, Fla., where he was campaigning for the state's Republican governor, Rick Scott.

The United States is sending thousands of military personnel and other federal workers to the West African countries hit hardest by the virus, and a mandatory quarantine could make sending personnel to those countries more difficult, officials said.

The decision to institute a mandatory quarantine came after a New York doctor, Craig Spencer, received a diagnosis of Ebola on Thursday, having contracted the virus while working in Guinea for Doctors Without Borders. He is being treated at Bellevue Hospital Center, where he is in serious but stable condition. "The patient looks better than yesterday," Dr. Ramanathan Raju, the president of the city's Health and Hospitals Corporation, said on Sunday.

The decision for mandatory quarantines has not only opened a rift with federal officials, but also between New York City and the state.

Having seen the disorganized way officials in Dallas implemented quarantine orders for people who came into contact with Thomas Duncan, the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, New York City officials were determined to do better.

One key part of their strategy was to ensure that they were able to meet all the needs of those placed in isolation, making their time as comfortable as possible.

The plans called for monitors to be assigned to each quarantined family or individual and dedicated solely to help them get meals, stay in contact with loved ones and have a clear line of communication with officials.

On Friday night, those carefully laid plans were thrown aside when Mr. Christie and Mr. Cuomo called for the mandatory quarantine.

"The entire city was not informed, even the mayor's office," according to a city official involved in New York's Ebola response. "The mayor was caught unaware."

"The big picture decision was made in the absence of any deep thinking about what implementing the policy would entail," the official said.

As for Ms. Hickox, her plane happened to land precisely at the wrong moment.

"This nurse just happened to land mid-conversation between the two governors," the official said.

[CountDeMoney]

the first person to be forced into isolation under the new protocols, Kaci Hickox, a nurse returning from Sierra Leone, planned to mount a legal challenge to the quarantine order. Despite having no symptoms, she has been kept under quarantine at a hospital in New Jersey, where she has been confined to a tent equipped with a portable toilet and no shower. On Sunday, she spoke to CNN about the way she has been treated, describing it as "inhumane."

Now that's being a bit silly.  Surprised there wasn't any legal action taken on her behalf.

have also been in touch with Mr. Christie, trying to get them to modify the order. But Mr. Christie said at a fund-raiser in Florida that he had "gotten absolutely no contact" from the White House.

Maybe they're stuck in bridge traffic.

[Fate]

Weird. There's no reason to put her in a freaking tent. That hospital has at least one free bed available to house someone who is by all reports healthy. It's like they're intentionally sabotaging Christie/Cuomo's quarantine effort.

[Razgovory]

Btw, how do you get medically untrained airport personnel tasked with checking thousands of people daily "look for signs of ebola" (which are essentially flu like) during the flu season? This sounds like the most moronic, disastrous idea I have heard in a long time but I could be missing something?

In all likelyhood yeah, you are missing something.

[garbon]

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/oct/27/new-york-hospital-ebola-symptoms

New York hospital monitors boy, five, for possible symptoms

A five-year-old boy who arrived from Guinea was being observed in isolation at Bellevue Hospital in New York City for possible Ebola symptoms, media reports said on Monday.

The boy, who arrived in the United States on Saturday, had a 103F (39C) fever, ABC News reported. He has not been tested for the virus and was not under quarantine, ABC said, citing officials with New York City's health department.

The New York Post said the boy had been vomiting and was transported from his home in the Bronx by emergency medical workers.