How Can Health Worker Exposed to Ebola Self-Monitor on Cruise Ship?

Ebola Scare on Cruise Ship
These spoiled American health care workers getting on and off commercial airliners and cruise ships may have chosen the wrong profession.  Maybe before being licensed in the State of Texas, they should be forced to spend six months in places where doctors, nurses and health care aides have truly  been putting their lives on the line to fight Ebola and other serious diseases.   Or perhaps we're just now learning valuable lessons in human nature and the epidemiology of how pandemics happen even in developed countries, with highly-educated populations.

The health care worker, who it now seems, traveled to Ohio already showing early signs of Ebola and then returned to Dallas in worse shape to plan for her wedding, has caused several Texas schools to be closed down, forced public health trackers to locate passengers on two commercial flights, made it necessary to close a bridal shop and the tracking of its customers.  We're all praying that this woman makes a speedy recovery. But when she does, nursing should not be in her future. There had been earlier news reports that the Centers for Disease Control had given her permission to get on the plane to return to Dallas. But now it appears that she had called someone who had called someone, who had called someone at the CDC. And who had she called to get on the flight to Ohio in the first place?

And now we have several thousand passengers on a cruise ship stranded somewhere off the coast of Belize because another health care worker, who handled specimens from the Liberian Ebola patient who died, took a cruise.   This level of irresponsibility to public health concerns is unacceptable in licensed professional health care workers.

But let us also remember that health care workers are not overpaid.  They probably had their tickets paid for before this terrible episode unfolded. And we all know how "understanding" the travel industry is about refunds unless we're the ones in the coffin.  But this is why I'm so pleased that President Obama has just named Ron Klain, the new Ebola czar.  This kind of problem is far more difficult than it may first appear. The Liberian family who hosted the man who died of the disease was stuck in a contaminated apartment for 5 days, with no way to get food. They were forced to use the same bathroom as the sick man, and health officials had problems getting the right permits to have the dirty linen and towels removed.  There are logistical matters that can turn into nightmares for the people that we the public are asking to voluntarily quarantine or monitor themselves.

So while it isn't too much to ask of health professionals that they behave like health professionals, it is also the new Ebola Czar's responsibility to see that people caught up in the current nightmare are not just kicked to the curb in our anxiety to gain control of this pandemic.   

Email Post

Comments

Post a Comment