Ebola Stokes Concern, Preparation in Bethesda

News broke Thursday that one of two Dallas nurses infected by the deadly virus will be transferred to NIH in Bethesda

October 16, 2014 7:23 p.m.

All you have to do is search “Ebola Bethesda” on Twitter or read the comments of local news reports to find out how people feel about the news that a nurse infected with Ebola is being treated at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda.

Some comments aren’t kind, ranging from “Get this Ebola patient out of Bethesda,” to “My mama works there.. not a fan of this idea;” while others expressed concern about having an infected person so close an urban area and to Washington, D.C. Then there are those people who hailed the decision, saying the highly-trained physicians at NIH are the right people to handle the job of treating infected nurse Nina Pham.

The national news media jumped on the story—and will likely have a presence at the research center on Wisconsin Avenue while the 26-year-old nurse undergoes treatment.

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Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told members of Congress at a hearing Thursday that Pham was being transported to the center’s specialized isolation unit and would be treated in one of the unit’s two beds. She arrived Thursday night, with her ambulance trip from a Frederick airport recorded by a news helicopter.

NIH said in a news release that the isolation unit is a “high-level containment facility” and one of a small number of such facilities in the United States. NIH said it’s “taking every precaution to ensure the safety of our patients, NIH staff and the public.”

The decision to transfer Pham to NIH from Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas was made by her and her family, according to a statement released Thursday by the Texas hospital. The hospital said her “condition remains good.”

“It was a difficult decision to transfer Nina, a member of our own family and someone who is greatly loved and respected,” Dr. Gary Weinstein, chief of pulmonology and critical care medicine at the hospital, said in a statement. “We’re so glad she has improved so much in such a short amount of time. Our prayers are with her, and she’ll be in wonderful hands at NIH.”

The hospital later released a video of Pham laying in a hospital bed talking to Weinstein before her transfer to NIH.

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Pham said in the statement, “I appreciate everything that my co-workers have done to care for me at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas. I’m doing really well thanks to this team, which is the best in the world.”

The move was made in the wake of a scandal brewing over whether healthcare workers at Texas Presbyterian Hospital Dallas followed proper protocol while treating the first infected man  in the United States, a Liberian named Thomas Eric Duncan, who later died at the Texas hospital. Dr. Tom Frieden, director of The Centers for Disease Control, said that breaches of protocols led to Pham and another nurse being infected. The second nurse, 29-year-old Amber Vinson, is undergoing treatment in a special unit at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta.

It’s important to note that the virus can only be spread from direct contact to broken skin or saliva with bodily fluids infected with the virus or with contaminated environments—such as clothing or bed linens soiled by someone infected with the virus, according to the World Health Organization.

The two nurses who became infected both cared for Duncan at the Texas hospital.

Locally, preparations are underway to ensure precautions are taken to handle a possible spread of the virus, although health care officials say that it’s not likely to happen.

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Montgomery County Public Schools has instituted a policy to call parents of any student who has a temperature over 100.4 degrees to determine if the student has come in contact with or has traveled with anyone to West Africa in the past 21 days, according to a Montgomery Community Media report.

Righttime Medical Care, an urgent care provider with locations in Rockville, Gaithersburg and Silver Spring, announced in a press release Thursday it’s preparing “for the threat of the Ebola virus” by coordinating with local health authorities and hospitals in case someone calls one of its centers and reports Ebola-like symptoms. The company has instituted a screening system to find out if callers to its 24-hour resource center who report symptoms such as high fever, intense weakness or muscle pain have traveled to one of the three West African countries identified as the center of the outbreak.

Dr. Ulder J. Tillman, Montgomery County’s health officer, told the County Council at a Tuesday briefing that the county is preparing for possible cases of Ebola, according to an account in the Gazette. She said the county is emphasizing the need for health workers to ask patients if they have traveled to West Africa. If the answer is yes, healthcare providers should immediately notify local and state health officials, she said.

But Tillman hoped to temper growing concern about Ebola by pointing out that people are more likely to die from the flu this year than the virus; last year 36,000 Americans died from influenza,  the newspaper report said.

 

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