SARS
It has been a tough week for my family and I. It is no longer safe for us to go outside. Last month, I noticed that the Taipei General Hospital located two blocks from my house has been taped off. At first, I didn't understand why all the sick children and elders were not seeking medical treatment there. As days went by, brother and I started taking a different route to school and I no longer saw any activity of patients and doctors going in and out of the hospital.
At school, our teacher discussed the new lessons for the next few weeks to us, and told us to work on our lesson book each day. She told us that we were excused from school and that we would not be attending classes until it was safe to do so.
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Since the illness is usually seen through the case of having high fever, our temperatures are measured every half an hour by mother. SARS can be contracted by having any close contact with someone with SARS. The scary thing is that airborne means I can simply breathe the same air that another person has and the incubation period for symptoms to appear is from two to ten days. Contracting SARS seems likely to be possible from anyone and anywhere. That is why we stay home most of the days and watch television.
The quarantine of hospitals and nurses that work in those hospitals contracting SARS has heightened the scare about SARS. The daily lives of the Taiwanese people are much different than before. People hardly go outside of their homes. If so, they are prepared to wear face masks that cover from their noses to the bottom of [their] mouths. Since my birthday was coming up, mother promised me she would get me the newest fashion shoes at the department store. The day we went into Sogo Department Store, it was relatively empty compared to the past. The workers there also [wear] face masks when addressing us at the front entrance and sales floor. My mother and I got our temperatures measured to make sure we do not have a fever at the front entrance.
Although the likelihood of a teenager to contract SARS is low, I am scared that elders such has my grandmother are higher at risk. Mother calls
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At the first possible outbreak of SARS, the nurse will need to follow protocol. The initiation of the protocol begins with an assessment of the patient. A doctor will determine if the patient is possibly infected with SARS by following the physical and epidemiologic criteria. The Center of Disease Control and Prevention mandates reporting to the all cases where the patient has pneumonia of an unknown origin, and could have recently been exposed of the SARS virus [ (Center of Disease Control, 2005) ]. Once the report has been made the community health nurse should have all hospitalized patients with respiratory symptoms questioned on their recent history and possibilities of contact with the virus. Next, the community health nurse needs to educate staff and the community about possible ways to contract SARS, and encourage behaviors such as, frequent hand washing, covering their nose and mouth while coughing or sneezing, and using and properly disposing of tissues for respiratory secretions. [ (Center of Disease Control, 2005) ] Once health care members and the public are educated on the route of transmission they can prevent being exposed. Confirmed infected patients would be transferred to Seattle, where they can be in isolation rooms, patients can be more critically monitored, and research centers can be of benefit to
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SARS appears to spread by close person-to-person contact. It is thought that transmission is most readily occurred through respiratory droplets. These can be produced when an infected person coughs or sneezes. These droplets are propelled through the air and are deposited on the mucous membranes of the mouth, nose, or eyes of a person that is nearby. It is also possible that the virus can spread when a person touches a surface or object contaminated with infectious droplets and then touches their mouth, nose, or eyes. Furthermore, it is possible that SARS-CoV might be airborne spread or by other methods that are not yet known.
Normally infecting fruit bats, the Ebola virus found a mutation allowing it to spread to humans. This virus is an acute and often fatal illness. This virus first erupted in two outbreaks in 1976 (one occurring in Nzara and Sudan, while the other occurred in a village near the Ebola river, where the virus takes its name.) The current outbreak, starting in West Africa with the potential to spread throughout the world, is larger and more complex than previous outbreaks. This virus has caused more deaths than all other past Ebola outbreaks combined. With approximately five people infected with the virus every hour in Sierra Leone alone, how far – and how fast – will the Ebola virus go?