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Tuesday, March 19, 2024
March 19, 2024

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In Our View: Balance Key In Ebola Fight

Response should fall somewhere between hysteria, necessary caution

The Columbian
Published:

The small outbreak of Ebola cases in the United States — and the large threat the disease poses — calls for a response that lands somewhere between hysteria and necessary caution. Of course, what constitutes that appropriate balance is open to debate.

While the chances of a large Ebola outbreak in this country remain infinitesimal — thanks to advanced medical and information systems — the threat is not something that can be ignored. The World Health Organization recently increased its estimated mortality rate for the disease from 50 to 70 percent, which is a horrifying number. And, as anybody who has read Richard Preston’s 1995 best-seller “The Hot Zone” can attest, Ebola is a horrifying disease.

Because of that, the initial response for local officials must be to address the concerns of nurses and others who are on the front lines of patient care. A survey of Washington State Nurses Association members, taken as the outbreak was first expanding to the United States, indicated that nurses felt unprepared to deal with the disease. For their part, Vancouver’s two hospitals — PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center and Legacy Salmon Creek Medical Center — have been holding regular staff meetings to discuss Ebola preparedness.

As the situation in Dallas demonstrates, preparedness for health care workers is of the utmost importance. When Ebola landed on U.S. shores in the form of patient Thomas Eric Duncan, who later died, two nurses who came into contact with him at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas also contracted the disease.

Yet the need for such preparedness goes well beyond full-service hospitals. The odds are that the first case of Ebola in Washington will appear as flu-like symptoms in a patient at a clinic or a small doctor’s office or at a routine checkup. And given the international nature of the region’s two major cities — Seattle and Portland — the disease eventually will arrive in this part of the country.

But that does not serve as a call for hysteria. For now, Ebola is largely contained in three West Africa countries — Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Given the state of medical care and information systems in those countries, along with what experts say is a vast distrust of government, the World Health Organization estimates that the number of new cases of the disease will rise to 10,000 per week by December.

That has led to some calls for the United States to prohibit any flights from those nations to this country, ignoring the fact that most travelers would come through England or Spain. That being said, the current policy of asking travelers whether they have visited West Africa or whether they are experiencing Ebola symptoms would seem to be inadequate. Regardless of what measures are taken to keep Ebola out of the United States, none of them will be fool-proof. Because modern travel has made the world much smaller, pretending we can isolate ourselves is unrealistic, meaning that prevention efforts must be accompanied by preparedness.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control has updated its protocol for dealing with Ebola patients and for preventing the spread of the disease. The initial response was lackluster but, as with any pathogen that is new to this country, officials are learning as they go. To adequately adjust to the disease and to provide the best possible protection for the public, health officers must pay heed to the concerns of nurses. Foot soldiers often have a better idea of what’s going on than the generals.

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