Posted on 09/11/2014 6:50:54 AM PDT by null and void
As the current Ebola outbreak's death toll continues to skyrocket, with almost half of all 2,288 deaths occurring within the last 21 days, the lack of sufficient medical personnel to treat all those affected threatens to spread the disease even further, as even the equipment used to keep safe from Ebola can carry the disease.
As Discovery News reports, the HAZMAT suits used by medical personnel to protect themselves while treating Ebola victims can carry the virus; it does not die upon leaving the body and landing on the protective gear. This means that, while doctors and nurses using protective gear can shield themselves from the virus while wearing it, the removal procedures and process of destroying used HAZMAT gear could result in someone inadvertently coming into contact with the virus.
As of August, the World Health Organization warned that 170 health care workers had contracted Ebola. Discovery notes that over 120 health care workers have died of Ebola since the outbreak began in January. In Nigeria, only one patient who has died of Ebola-- the first patient, Patrick Sawyer-- was not a health care worker.
All four Americans diagnosed with Ebola have been medical workers. Two-- Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol-- have already been cured after being treated at Atlanta's Emory University Hospital. A third, Dr. Rick Sacra, is currently being treated in a hospital in Nebraska, and a fourth patient who has not been identified is currently receiving treatment at Emory University Hospital after being airlifted out of Sierra Leone. The World Health Organization has called the outbreak "unprecedented" and warned that the affected countries-- Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Nigeria, and Senegal-- do not have adequate medical infrastructure to properly contain the spread of the virus.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
I wonder if they have these showers at Emory and at the other 3 sites.
I think they do. The shower is an important part of infection control.
So they really don't need these hazmat suits at all then...
Right?
It is spread by direct contact with infected patients or their bodily fluids. Since medical providers tend to touch their patients a lot and can be splashed with infected fluids, they need to be completely covered.
People who aren't touching the patients or aren't within range of splashing fluids are fine. Humans are not known to exhale aerosolized virus.
The decontamination procedure that I read about for Level 4 containment, talked about a chamber that used a solution and then a chamber that used UV light before they went into a chamber to take off the suits.
IIRC, they are using a bleach solution in the areas where the current outbreaks are. I think they are also reusing some of the gear, after it has been washed in bleach, which sounds like an exposure just waiting to happen.
A distinction that is not generally made by most people to begin with.
I have seen the medical workers still in the suits being sprayed down with sodium hypochlorite solution. This probably is a desirable procedure prior to removing the suit.
I recall the one time having to work on an old, defunct landfill with a respirator and tyvek suit on in the summer on the east coast. HOT!
After I saw some guy walking his dog in the same area as I was working, I would sneak gulps of fresh air and try to wipe off the fog from the face mask. Probably not a huge deal at an old landfill.
A big no-no in an Ebola isolation tent.
I’m reading “The Hot Zone” right now. Even in 1989, staff were washed with decon fluid for seven minutes after leaving the infected zone. Wikipedia says “the entrance and exit of a level four biolab will contain multiple showers, a vacuum room, an ultraviolet light room, and other safety precautions designed to destroy all traces of the biohazard.”
But it doesn’t take many virus particles to get infected.
These people are trying to perform surgery and all those other medical things under those conditions. Pretty rough.
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