WASHINGTON — One of Washington’s strengths is that the area is more than just the nation’s Capital. We are also an international city — connected by air and ancestry to people around the world.
And that is why hospitals in the D.C. region are stepping up their game when it comes to Ebola.
“There’s travel between West Africa and the U.S., so we may see a patient show up just like the one in Dallas,” says Dr. Glenn Wortmann, chief of infectious diseases at MedStar Washington Hospital Center.
He says there is a battle plan in place based primarily on guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has been largely overseeing the government’s response to the disease.
Across the region, medical personnel are being trained and briefed on how best to handle Ebola — starting with doctors, nurses, aides and technicians in emergency and critical care departments.
At area hospitals there are no isolation wards like the one at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta that housed two Americans who contacted Ebola in Africa. But all the major local medical centers have individual isolation rooms for patients with communicable diseases, like tuberculosis and chicken pox, that are ready to receive Ebola patients.
Hospital personnel assigned to those rooms are already outfitted with special protective gear, including impermeable gowns, gloves, face shields and shoe covers. Wortmann says the goal is “to prevent ourselves from getting in contact with blood and other body fluids.”
The special protective garb will also be available for personnel in the emergency room — the port of entry for just about any Ebola patient likely to show up at an American hospital.
The Ebola patient in Dallas was mistakenly treated and released when he first went to the ER with a fever because word about his recent West Africa travels wasn’t passed from one hospital worker to another.
Wortmann says a protocol is already in place at his hospital to prevent anything like that from ever occurring. He says the first question ER patients are asked is “do you have a fever.” The second is “have you traveled abroad?”
A patient who is feverish and has been to an Ebola affected country is given expedited screening, and extra precautions are immediately put in place.
Wortmann says most people don’t know a lot about Ebola, and too many are panicking. He says America’s health infrastructure will keep the disease in check, adding “the chance of an epidemic in the U.S. is almost unfathomable.”
He stresses Ebola can only be caught through direct contact with infected body fluids.
“You don’t get it just from passing someone in the hallway, seeing them across the street,” he says. “You have to be in direct contact with them.”
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