Stop ebola from becoming ‘world’s next AIDS,’ implores CDC chief
Condition of Spanish nurse worsens after she became the first person outside of Africa to contract disease
The deadly spread of Ebola in West Africa is something unseen since the outbreak of AIDS, Thomas Frieden, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Thursday.
“I would say that in the 30 years I’ve been working in public health, the only thing like this has been AIDS,” he told a top-level Ebola forum in Washington.
“It’s going to be a long fight,” he told the heads of the United Nations, World Bank and International Monetary Fund gathered in Washington.
“We have to work now so that it is not the world’s next AIDS.”
Frieden’s remarks came as a Madrid hospital announced that the health of a Spanish nurse who is the first person known to have caught Ebola outside of Africa has worsened.
“Her clinical situation has deteriorated but I can’t provide more information,” because of the express wishes of the infected nurse, a spokeswoman for the La Paz-Carlos III hospital told reporters.
The nurse, Teresa Romero, helped treat two elderly Spanish missionaries who died after returning from west Africa with Ebola. She tested positive for the disease on Monday.
Her case has has heightened concerns that the worst epidemic of Ebola on record could spread from west Africa, where it began late last year and has taken nearly 3,900 lives, mainly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
Romero had gone on leave after the second of her Ebola patients died on September 25, although authorities said she did not leave Madrid.
She started to feel ill on September 29 but was not admitted to hospital until seven days later, potentially creating a large window of time in which other people may have been exposed.
Romero said in a newspaper interview published Wednesday she believes she might have caught the deadly virus after touching her face with an infected glove after cleaning the room of one of the missionaries who died from Ebola.
On Wednesday, a Liberian man with Ebola died in the US. He had come to Dallas, Texas in late September but did not display obvious signs of having the disease when he entered the US.
When he first sought medical care for a fever and abdominal pain at a Dallas hospital, Ebola wasn’t suspected. Hospital officials initially said they didn’t know about his travel, but later said that information had been provided and was available to the medical staff caring for him at that time.
The case has prompted US authorities to announce new health screening procedures at American airports and step up training procedures for hospitals on Ebola alert and health workers headed to Africa.
Dr. David Sugerman, an Emory University emergency room doctor heading soon to Sierra Leone, was among students in a CDC training session Monday in Anniston, Alabama.
Sugerman, who also works for the CDC, said breaches in health workers’ protective gear in West Africa have contributed to Ebola’s spread.
“You realize going through these exercises how easy that is,” he said.
“In Sierra Leone or Liberia or Guinea it’s going to be quite hot and humid. And you start sweating. And some of the procedures, like placing an IV, you get pretty nervous with a patient that you know has a high viral load,” he said. “Then you get fogged up and you get anxious and you could start pulling at your” equipment, which could be contaminated with virus. “So you have to mentally go through this a number of times and become well-versed. So it becomes a routine.”
For US hospitals, the CDC has issued guidance on how to spot suspicious cases and isolate them if necessary, with an emphasis on the importance of asking patients about recent travel to the outbreak region, where more than 3,800 people have died from the disease.
It’s so easy to forget to ask about travel,” said Dr. Emily Landon, director of a University of Chicago infection control program. “That’s our one vulnerability.”
Emergency room staffers are trained to focus on the most critical problem, like providing fast treatment for a heart attack or broken leg, she explained. If the same patient also has a fever and headache — common problems but also Ebola symptoms — “it’s hard to break that autopilot and say, ‘Oh, by the way, did you travel'” recently, Landon said. “We have to get them to break that autopilot every time.”