A man from Liberia comes to the ER presenting Ebola like symptoms

[herding cats]

He told the staff where he'd been, and they sent him home with a round of antibiotics instead of admitting, isolating and testing him. That's incompetence beyond what I was expecting in this incident.

Ebola patient told hospital of Liberia travel but was not initially admitted

Health officials in Texas revealed on Wednesday that the first patient to be diagnosed with Ebola outside Africa told hospital staff on his first visit that he had recently travelled from Liberia, where the disease is prevalent, but was nevertheless sent home.

An official at the Dallas hospital where he is being treated told a news conference that the patient told an emergency-room nurse about his travel history. But the information was not shared widely enough with the medical team treating him, and he was diagnosed as suffering from a “low-grade common viral disease”.

The man, identified on Wednesday by his family as Thomas Eric Duncan, was sent home with a course of antibiotics, an outcome that the hospital described as a matter of “regret”.

We can do better than this, we have to do better than this. There's a chance, a better than slim one, other cases of Ebola will be the result of this incompetent action by the hospital staff. That's inexcusable.

[MohRokTah]

1. Rick Perry’s Refusal to Expand Texas’ Medicaid Program Could Result In Thousands of Deaths

Rick Perry’s Refusal to Expand Texas’ Medicaid Program Could Result In Thousands of Deaths

You could say that the idea for Medicaid began in Texas. In the late 1920s, a middle-school teacher named Lyndon B. Johnson saw the crushing poverty and inequality his Mexican-American students faced in the small South Texas town of Cotulla. Nearly 40 years later, then-President Johnson declared a War on Poverty and, in 1965, signed the bill that created Medicaid—a program funded jointly by the states and the federal government to provide health insurance to low-income Americans. It was part of his vision for a “Great Society,” which he boldly defined as “a society where no child will go unfed, and no youngster will go unschooled.”

Johnson probably couldn’t have imagined the program’s impact. In the past 47 years, Medicaid has provided medical care to hundreds of millions of Americans—including low-income children, the elderly, disabled, and pregnant women—and has saved millions of lives. More than 50 million are currently enrolled.

In Johnson’s home state, however, the commitment to Medicaid has always been lackluster at best. Texas’ Medicaid program spends less than the national average per enrollee, and reimburses doctors, hospitals and other providers less than the national average. In many areas, the Texas program pays for only the minimum standards required by the federal government. One in four Texans—6.1 million people—lack health insurance, the highest percentage in the country.

Now another Democratic president wants to expand Medicaid, under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare.” Even a modest expansion would mean that an estimated 1.5 million working adults who earn 133 percent of the federal poverty level or less (about $14,856 a year for an individual) could have health insurance starting in 2014.

...

http://www.texasobserver.org/rick-perrys-refusal-to-expand-texas-medicaid-program-could-result-in-thousands-of-deaths/

[herding cats]

5. I agree Perry is an ass and people in Texas are going to die because of his politics.

I'm not worried about an Ebola epidemic in the US, though. Which doesn't mean isolated cases via travelers such as this one are not still a possibility. To send someone home under the circumstances they did in this case put those whom he was around in close contact at a greater risk than they were even before. It upsets me they dropped the ball so dramatically at that hospital.

For what it's worth, I'd have been as upset if they'd have done this with a SARS or MERS case.

[Politicalboi]

2. Well, it's Texas

That alone should scare the shit out of us. We're letting a state that doesn't even give it's own people healthcare handle this.

[seabeyond]

3. seriously? that is such bullshit. i hate when people like you make me have to defend texas with

crap like yours...

[In_The_Wind]

4. Not too bright given the facts.

[Travis_0004]

6. I wonder why we are still issuing travel visas from Libera

My understanding is he is a Liberian citizen visiting his sister. I would think we should cut back on unnecessary travel. I wouldnt have a problem with a US citizen coming home or even visiting a dying relative, but I wouldnt have a problem eliminating unnecessary travel.