An Ebola Patient and A Lesson in Racial Profiling that I Hope Texans Never Forget

Did Texas Hospital Behave Like Liberian Clinic

Thomas Eric Duncan appears to have become infected with the Ebola virus in Liberia, after taking a pregnant young woman to several hospitals and clinics. None of them would take her because they were full.  He took her back home, where she died several hours later.

Ironically, six days after arriving in Dallas from Liberia, Duncan went to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital suffering from symptoms of Ebola at its most contagious stage. The hospital sent him home. That very week, the hospital staff had participated in a training session  meant to prepare them for the possibility that the West African Ebola epidemic might sooner or later spill over our border, and it was crucial that they be prepared.

And now we get to the matter of racial profiling.  It is insidious because it all too often operates below the level of peoples' conscious awareness.  The victim of profiling is suddenly being seen as though through a device that flattens a three-dimensional human into a two dimensional crayon drawing.

When the Liberian entered the Emergency Room, he passed through the hospital's invisible profiling device.  The nurses and doctors were not looking to find out what was wrong with a three-dimensional human being, with a history and moving parts.  It was looking to get that two-dimensional, i.e. profiled, minority out of the waiting room as efficiently as possible.  The ER waiting room was full of those uninsured minorities, every hour of every day.  Now, don't get me wrong.  If the man had been bleeding all over the carpet, they would have taken other steps.

But let's get back to the matter at hand.  Profiling is a two-way process.  If the doctors and staff had been trained to look for Ebola, and they ignored a Liberian with Ebola symptoms, then what exactly were they looking for.  The answer is -- a white doctor or health care worker, flown in on a private plane, for whom everyone had been alerted that "now is the moment to shine. The world is watching. We have our first Ebola patient."

And yet Presbyterian Hospital is not entirely to blame for this ethical lapse.   Our Governor Rick Perry's refusal to accept federal Medicaid funding has ensured that financially strapped  Texas hospitals would end up treating minorities little better than the treatment they would have gotten from a hospital in war-torn, Ebola-infested Liberia.

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