Ebola outbreak: Nurse infected in Spain

[Bosonic]

Source: BBC

The Spanish health minister has confirmed that a nurse who treated a victim of Ebola in Madrid has tested positive for the disease.

The Spanish nurse is the first person in the current outbreak known to have contracted Ebola outside Africa.

She was a member of the team that treated Spanish priest Manuel Garcia Viejo, who died of the virus on 25 September.

Some 3,400 people have died in the outbreak - mostly in West Africa.

Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-29514920

[TwilightGardener]

1. So all the assurances that it only spread in Africa because they don't have

protective gear and clean water and good isolation techniques are kind of dubious--because I'm pretty sure Madrid has those things, plus they knew the original patient was coming, he didn't just show up as a surprise like our TX guy did. I think some strains of this disease are spreading in ways the experts don't understand.

[valerief]

2. Press conference bravado? Hell, yeah. Safeguards? Meh. nt

[Voice for Peace]

3. time to build up ye olde immune system

[TwilightGardener]

4. That which doesn't kill you...

will make you shoot blood from your eyes and poop out your own intestines. And then kill you.

[Voice for Peace]

6. comin to git you

[PeoViejo]

7. It's your Immune System that Kills You

not the Virus.

[Voice for Peace]

11. hmm.. that could be a problem. unless the immune system is already primed to

spot bad intruders before they make themselves at home.

I've always believed in those spontaneously-generating little
armies -- vast but little -- inside our bodies. Keeping the
homeland safe from illness.

[kestrel91316]

5. Why was she allowed to wallow naked in his bodily fluids??

[TwilightGardener]

8. Everyone working on the patients here have just collectively had a shiver go down

their spines, I'm sure.

[kestrel91316]

9. Yep. We need a vaccine for medical personnel and we need it FAST.

[B2G]

10. Yep. They PLANNED for this patient

He didn't just wander in off the streets.

Not good.

[harun]

14. Proof this strain is much stronger. Won't see the

News talk about that though.

[ZombieHorde]

12. Does one case qualify as an outbreak?

Seems like hyperbole to me.

[B2G]

13. It's concerning for a couple of reasons

One of which is she's been feeling ill for about a week and was on holiday when the sypmtoms started. Where she was, I don't know.


http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29514920

[spinbaby]

15. If she was on holiday...

...she apparently had no idea she had been exposed. I find that rather concerning.

[Yo_Mama]

17. Well, she's the second case, technically.

And now they get to wait another few weeks to see if another one pops up, plus they have to have worries about the health care workers treating her now. As for contact tracing, they will have to search multiple locations with transients (resort). A very bad scenario, with the real hope being that she just wasn't ill enough before she came home to be shedding virus.

That Dr. Sacra who was treated in Nebraska? He was never treating Ebola patients. He was working in a maternity ward in a hospital that didn't have any Ebola patients. You can be non-clinically ill and still infect other people under the right circs. Of course, the exposure levels are high in maternity/obstetrics, but you can be sure that he was pretty gloved up and he still got it. He had a LOT of experience working in that setting. He wasn't just some careless newbie.

There has been a subliminal racism about the Ebola outbreak in Africa - everybody's been making assumptions that probably aren't true.

[Earth_First]

16. Now couple this with the recent news that 87% of US nurses state they believe their hospitals...

...are unprepared to deal with an infected patient.

Troubling news.