The Importance Of Ebola Prevention And Preparedness

In African hospitals they often don’t use protective gear like masks, gloves, or gowns. When needles are used they may not be disposable or they might not be sterilized. Ebola is a biosafety level four virus. Biosafety level four is the highest level, and contain dangerous diseases that are possibly life threatening.

There has been an acute worry roaming about the United States concerning the Ebola Outbreak. Originally, Ebola had never touched the United States until September of 2014. (4) The disease was originated from and named after a river in the Democratic of Congo. Since discovered, there have been known cases in Africa. There have been many very deadly cases of Ebola - the fatality rate is estimated to from about fifty to ninety percent. (2) To the United States, there had never been any worry about the disease until September twentieth of 2014. A man by the name of Thomas Eric Duncan boarded flight 822 from Liberia to Dallas, Texas. Flight 822 was where it all began. Nobody had any

In 2014 the United States was hit with a force far more deadly and dangerous than many threats received. The ebola virus took the world by storm after it was carried to the United States and spread by people who had visited West Africa. This virus was all the more deadly as it often took hours for any symptoms to occur. In this time the Center for Disease Control spent much time and many resources looking for answers to the many questions they had. Under the time constraint and scrutinizing public, they had to determine what ebola was, what it did and its effects on the general public.

Since the epidemic started the CDC, WHO and other U.S. government agencies coordinated a uniform response to the affected areas to gain control over this horrific occurrence. During the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the CDC was organizing Ebola treatment centers in the United States (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2015). These designated hospitals were spread throughout the U.S. and began receiving patients, many whom were doctors, aid workers, missionaries and one reporter. These centers received specialized training, as well as dedicated areas for the infected individuals. As the Ebola became more evident throughout the United States, medical staff became more informed of the illness and specialized training was necessary for front-line staff. Even though community hospitals were not likely to have been affected by patients being transferred from Africa, they too were receiving additional Ebola training for this

The infected person should be in separated from other people. All equipment, medical waste, patient waste and surfaces that may have come into contact with body fluids need to be disinfected. During the 2014 outbreak, kits were put together to help families treat Ebola disease in their homes, which include protective clothing as well as chlorine powder and other cleaning supplies. Education of those who provide care in these techniques, and the establishment of such barrier-separation supplies has been a priority of Doctors without Borders.

The impaction of the Biocontainment Unit is, faces highly contagious disease in the community and treats those illnesses as quickly as possible with a highly skilled, trained and experienced team. For example, Nebraska Biocontainment Unit had 3 Ebola patients in last year because the unit has the largest isolation facility which includes an air-handling system, high-level filtration and ultraviolet light, autoclaves, a dunk tank for laboratory specimens, etc. In the whole country, there are three biocontainment units, including Nebraska’s; however, they chose to send Ebola patients to the Nebraska unit because of staff, equipment and the way that unit was built.

More active disease surveillance needs to occur. This means that health care workers should be encouraged to document and report those they think have been exposed and their contacts. In more effectively reporting suspected cases, Ebola response teams are better able to promptly follow-up, transfer to isolation centers, and assess the scope of the epidemic (Matua, Van der Wal, & Locsin,

Due to the severity of Ebola, more Americans are conscious of the lack of preventative measures afforded for healthcare workers and patients. After Healthcare workers became responsible for three of the four cases of Ebola on U.S soil, a high degree of concern arises, particularly regarding Healthcare Associated Infections. HAIs are responsible for 33.8 billion dollars in healthcare associated costs, but face the long-standing issue of a lack of funding, community support, opposition of the use of penalty tax, and awareness as potential barriers. It is important

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had many key audiences it was required to communicate with during the Ebola outbreak. Most importantly, the CDC needed to be communicating with employees within the CDC. They needed to be on the same page as to how messages were being released and controlled, as this was a very sensitive subject. Furthermore, it was imperative that heath care providers around the world were receiving appropriate information. U.S. government agencies, the World Health Organization (WHO) and local and regional public health officials (Dallas County Department of Health and Human Services and the Texas Department of Health and Human Services (DSHS)) were also key audiences. More specifically, the nurses

Prevention of the Ebola virus is more useful than the treatments. Improving sanitation is an important thing to do in rural African countries. Any victims need to be isolated as soon as possible. Quarantining of infected people from others plays a major role. People who have been in close contact with the infected

Based on the findings from the assessment, corrective measures can be put in place to ensure that health workers do not contact the virus when on duty. If the number of health workers who were competent in proper use of PPE and they used it as per manufacture’s instructions and still contracted the virus, then they may a need to asses the PPE to ensure that it is of high quality to protect personnel from infection. This can be achieved through working with regulatory authorities, WHO and stringent regulatory authorities to ensure that manufactures who supply PPE are certified. Future PPE should be acquired from manufacture’s whose PPE meet the required specifications for EBOLA PPE. Since EBOLA is transmitted through blood and other body fluids, PPE which does resistant to fluid penetration should be used in order to prevent infection of health workers. A pool of selected certified suppliers who meet the specifications can be identified for future outbreak response. It is important to have a pool to ensure that in case of outbreaks, the right

Of the four strains, Ebola-Zaire is the most lethal form, with death rates as high as 90 per cent (Dobson, 2007). Due to its lethality, Ebola-Zaire would be the biological pathogen weapon selected for the attack. The symptoms of infection are: fever, chills and muscle aches. Usually about five days after becoming symptomatic, the infected person may develop a skin rash, nausea, vomiting, chest pain, sore throat, abdominal pain and diarrhea. More severe symptoms include: jaundice, severe weight loss, mental confusion, internal and external bleeding, shock, and multi-organ failure leading up to death (World Health Organization, 2015). The virus is transmitted person to person by contact with body fluids such as blood, tears, vomit, sweat or semen (CDC, 2015). A contaminated person is contagious once the carrier has developed a fever. Symptom onset can be from as soon as 2 days to as long as 21 days after contamination. Currently, there are no scanning or testing procedures available to test for the Ebola virus without laboratory tests. There are two test drugs to treat Ebola, but results are currently mixed (LINA, 2015). Studies in Africa, the locations of the first infections of three of the four Ebola virus types, have shown that common hospital sterilization (bleach) successfully kills the Ebola virus on exposed

THIRD POINT: There is no FDA approved vaccine currently available for Ebola. It is very important that everyone practices careful hygiene. Always wash hands with soap and

Ebola. Now here is a commonly asked question, how patients should be taken care of? What

Since there is no  preventative treatment for the Ebola virus currently and treatment is only experimental, we have to take careful measures in