This post was broadcast by Paul Craig Roberts to those subscribed to his blog. His message was: "From the nurses description of the lack of any ebola protocols among the staff and the absence of isolation and protective suiting, it will be a miracle if large numbers of people were not infected. If you think you can have any confidence in health authorities, disabuse yourself of the idea by reading the nurses' statement."

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THE BLOG

Statement by RN’s at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital as provided to National Nurses United

National Nurses United, 10/15/14

This is an inside story from some registered nurses at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas who have familiarity with what occurred at the hospital following the positive Ebola infection of first the late Thomas Eric Duncan and then a registered nurse who cared for him Nina Pham.

The RNs contacted National Nurses United out of frustration with a lack of training and preparation. They are choosing to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation.

The RNs who have spoken to us from Texas Health Presbyterian are listening in on this call and this is their report based on their experiences and what other nurses are sharing with them. When we have finished with our statement, we will have time for several questions. The nurses will have the opportunity to respond to your questions via email that they will send to us, that we will read to you.

We are not identifying the nurses for their protection, but they work at Texas Health Presbyterian and have knowledge of what occurred at the hospital.

They feel a duty to speak out about the concerns that they say are shared by many in the hospital who are concerned about the protocols that were followed and what they view were confusion and frequently changing policies and protocols that are of concern to them, and to our organization as well.

When Thomas Eric Duncan first came into the hospital, he arrived with an elevated temperature, but was sent home.

On his return visit to the hospital, he was brought in by ambulance under the suspicion from him and family members that he may have Ebola.

Mr. Duncan was left for several hours, not in isolation, in an area where other patients were present.

No one knew what the protocols were or were able to verify what kind of personal protective equipment should be worn and there was no training.

Subsequently a nurse supervisor arrived and demanded that he be moved to an isolation unit– yet faced resistance from other hospital authorities.

Lab specimens from Mr. Duncan were sent through the hospital tube system without being specially sealed and hand delivered. The result is that the entire tube system by which all lab specimens are sent was potentially contaminated.

There was no advance preparedness on what to do with the patient, there was no protocol, there was no system. The nurses were asked to call the Infectious Disease Department.  The Infectious Disease Department did not have clear policies to provide either.

Initial nurses who interacted with Mr. Duncan nurses wore a non-impermeable gown front and back, three pairs of gloves, with no taping around wrists, surgical masks, with the option of N-95s, and face shields.  Some supervisors said that even the N-95 masks were not necessary.

The suits they were given still exposed their necks, the part closest to their face and mouth.  They had suits with booties and hoods, three pairs of gloves, no tape.

For their necks, nurses had to use medical tape, that is not impermeable and has permeable seams, to wrap around their necks in order to protect themselves, and had to put on the tape and take it off on their own.

Nurses had to interact with Mr. Duncan with whatever protective equipment was available, at a time when he had copious amounts of diarrhea and vomiting which produces a lot of contagious fluids.

Hospital officials allowed nurses who had interacted with Mr. Duncan to then continue normal patient care duties, taking care of other patients, even though they had not had the proper personal protective equipment while caring for Mr. Duncan.

Patients who may have been exposed were one day kept in strict isolation units. On the next day were ordered to be transferred out of strict isolation into areas where there were other patients, even those with low-grade fevers who could potentially be contagious.

Were protocols breached? The nurses say there were no protocols.

Some hospital personnel were coming in and out of those isolation areas in the Emergency Department without having worn the proper protective equipment.

CDC officials who are in the hospital and Infectious Disease personnel have not kept hallways clean; they were going back and forth between the Isolation Pod and back into the hallways that were not properly cleaned, even after CDC, infectious control personnel, and doctors who exited into those hallways after being in the isolation pods.
Advance preparation

Advance preparation that had been done by the hospital primarily consisted of emailing us about one optional lecture/seminar on Ebola. There was no mandate for nurses to attend trainings, or what nurses had to do in the event of the arrival of a patient with Ebola-like symptoms.

This is a very large hospital. To be effective, any classes would have to offered repeatedly, covering all times when nurses work; instead this was treated like the hundreds of other seminars that are routinely offered to staff.

There was no advance hands-on training on the use of personal protective equipment for Ebola. No training on what symptoms to look for. No training on what questions to ask.

Even when some trainings did occur, after Mr. Duncan had tested positive for Ebola, they were limited, and they did not include having every nurse in the training practicing the proper way to don and doff, put on and take off, the appropriate personal protective equipment to assure that they would not be infected or spread an infection to anyone else.

Guidelines have now been changed, but it is not clear what version Nina Pham had available.

The hospital later said that their guidelines had changed and that the nurses needed to adhere to them.  What has caused confusion is that the guidelines were constantly changing.  It was later asked which guidelines should we follow? The message to the nurses was it’s up to you.

It is not up to the nurses to be setting the policy, nurses say, in the face of such a virulent disease. They needed to be trained optimally and correctly in how to deal with Ebola and the proper PPE doffing, as well as how to dispose of the waste.

In summary, the nurses state there have been no policies in cleaning or bleaching the premises without housekeeping services. There was no one to pick up hazardous waste as it piled to the ceiling. They did not have access to proper supplies and observed the Infectious Disease Department and CDC themselves violate basic principles of infection control, including cross contaminating between patients. In the end, the nurses strongly feel unsupported, unprepared, lied to, and deserted to handle the situation on their own.

We want our facility to be recognized as a leader in responding to this crisis. We also want to recognize the other nurses as heroes who put their lives on the line for their patients every day when they walk in the door.

National Nurses United Urges You to Take Action Now!

Sign the Petition and Tell President Obama - Protect Our Nurses!

Paul Craig Roberts (posted yesterday): "The CDC specifies a face mask, which the nurse had along with the other CDC specified gear. The use of face masks is based on the supposition that the virus is not airborne. Perhaps covering up for itself, CDC’s Dr. Tom Frieden attributed the nurse’s infection to 'a breach of safety protocol.' In fact, the problem might be that respirators are required in place of face masks. If the CDC misunderstands the nature of the disease and persists in misunderstanding, the disease could get out of control in the US." Update: Dr Frieden now says that the infected nurse followed the protocol and that further research will be done to determine how the virus is spreading.

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Second US Ebola diagnosis deeply concerning, health officials admit

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 Tom Dart in Houston
 The Guardian, Sunday 12 October 2014                                                                                      Original Here

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To watch this video, you will need to go to the original

Federal health officials in the US admitted on Sunday they were deeply concerned by a “breach in protocol” after it was revealed that a healthcare worker who treated Thomas Eric Duncan in Dallas had become the second person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the US.
 
Four days after Duncan died in an isolation unit, after arriving in Dallas last month from Liberia, secondary tests confirmed that a female employee at Texas Health Presbyterian hospital has the virus, in the first case of Ebola transmission in the US and the second outside Africa.

Texas officials earlier said preliminary tests showed the worker had been exposed to Ebola, but they were awaiting confirmation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Confirmation followed on Sunday afternoon.

The White House said President Barack Obama had been updated about the case.

Hospital officials said the employee had worn full protective clothing during all contact with Duncan. Dr Tom Frieden, the CDC director, warned in a media briefing on Sunday that other hospital staff could also have been exposed to the virus and may show symptoms in the coming days.

“The healthcare workers who cared for this individual may have had a breach of the same nature,” Frieden said. “It is certainly very concerning and it tells us there is a need to enhance training and make sure protocols are followed.

“The protocols work … but we know that even a single lapse or breach can result in infection.”

The White House said Obama had asked the CDC to move as quickly as possible in investigating the apparent breach of infection control procedures, and told federal authorities to take more steps to make sure hospitals and healthcare providers are ready to follow the proper procedures in dealing with an Ebola patient.

The woman infected by Ebola in Dallas, who was identified in media reports as a nurse, treated Duncan after he fell gravely ill and was admitted to hospital on 28 September, his second visit to the hospital.

Hospital chief clinical officer Dr Daniel Varga said in a statement: “Individuals being monitored are required to take their temperature twice daily. As a result of that procedure, the caregiver notified the hospital of imminent arrival and was immediately admitted to the hospital in isolation.

“The entire process, from the patient’s self-monitoring to the admission into isolation, took less than 90 minutes. The patient’s condition is stable.”

The Texas health commissioner David Lakey said the test that confirmed the woman’s infection was conducted in a laboratory in Austin and came back positive on Saturday evening, but showed lower levels of the virus than in Duncan’s case.

“It’s deeply concerning that this infection occurred,” Frieden said. “We can’t let any hospital let its guard down.”

The woman was not among the 48 people officials are monitoring during the virus’s 21-day incubation period who may have contact with Duncan and are so far asymptomatic. Lakey said health officials were working to identify people who may have had contact with her once she started showing symptoms and as a result became contagious.

Frieden said that so far they had found only one such person, who was “under active monitoring”, but “it is possible that other individuals were exposed”.

He said that the woman had “extensive contact … on multiple occasions” with Duncan following his second visit to the hospital, where he was admitted and isolated.

Teresa Romero, a 44-year-old Spanish nurse, contracted Ebola after caring for a priest who had been repatriated from west Africa. She is being treated in a Madrid hospital and has told El Pais that she believes she may have made a mistake when taking off her protective suit, perhaps touching her face with her gloves.

Frieden said the second patient in Dallas has been interviewed but so far “that worker has not been able to identify a specific breach” which may have resulted in her exposure. The CDC said that on Friday the worker, who had been self-monitoring for Ebola symptoms, reported a low-grade fever and was referred for testing. She was promptly isolated, officials said.

 CDC chief Tom Frieden at a news conference in Atlanta. Photograph: John Amis/AP

After a series of missteps in Duncan’s case, federal and Texas officials have sought to quell public fears about the threat of the virus and the ability of government agencies to contain it. But news that one of its workers has contracted Ebola despite taking precautions puts the hospital under further pressure.

On 26 September, Duncan went to the hospital for treatment but was sent away with antibiotics after hospital staff seemingly failed to consider that he might have Ebola despite being made aware of his travel history. Medical records obtained by the Associated Press indicated that Duncan was feverish with a temperature of 103F on that visit. He then fell gravely ill and was rushed to the hospital on 28 September, where he was isolated. His diagnosis was confirmed on 30 September.

He was staying with Louise Troh, his partner, in an apartment less than a mile from the hospital. Relatives of Duncan’s family have indicated in statements to the media that they are unhappy with the hospital’s failure correctly to diagnose the 42-year-old during his first visit and dissatisfied with the standard of treatment he received once the case was confirmed. They are believed to be considering legal action against the hospital.

After being criticised for their sluggish response to Duncan’s diagnosis, which left several quarantined family members stuck in the apartment for several days before they were taken to a home at an undisclosed location and a hazardous-materials cleaning crew arrived to decontaminate the unit, Dallas officials were at pains in a Sunday morning media briefing to stress they have acted more decisively this time to clean and control access to the nurse’s residence.

Mayor Mike Rawlings said a team “has cleaned up the common areas and decontaminated the common areas and decontaminated any of the open areas of an apartment complex … they sprayed with a decontaminant, a clean-up agent and right now police are standing by to make sure no one enters. Furthermore, we have knocked on every door in that block and helped every single person who came to the door, explained what has happened.”

Rawlings also said a pet was believed to be inside the healthworker’s apartment, but was not believed to be exhibiting signs of Ebola and would be taken care of. This week, a dog belonging to the Spanish nurse infected with the disease was destroyed.

Rawlings said that reverse 911 calls had been made to nearby residents to inform them of the diagnosis and that officials would return to knock on doors again on Sunday and talk to any people they had missed. Printed materials were left at every door, Rawlings said.

Media images showed a police officer blocking the entrance to a small apartment building less than four miles northeast of downtown Dallas and four miles south of the hospital where Duncan died. Similar images showed a yellow barrel containing hazardous waste sitting on the front lawn of the building. 

 Police confer as a barrel for disposal of hazardous waste sits outside the apartment of the health worker.
Photograph: Louis DeLuca/AP

A neighbour, Cliff Lawson, 57, told Reuters he was woken at 6am by two Dallas police officers, who told him “don’t panic”.

“I went back to bed after that. There’s nothing you can do about it. You can’t wrap your house in bubble wrap,” Lawson said.

During a briefing, Varga declined to provide a detailed timeline of events leading to the worker’s hospitalisation, citing patient privacy rights. He said the hospital was tracking 18 of its employees for possible exposure in the wake of Duncan’s admission and that the current patient had not been considered as high risk.

The hospital has a 24-bed intensive care unit which it is using exclusively as an Ebola care unit. Varga said the hospital was not accepting any more emergency patients.

Enhanced screenings of travellers arriving at five major US airports from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea began at New York’s JFK on Saturday. Newark, Washington Dulles, Atlanta and Chicago O’Hare will follow suit on Thursday.

More than 4,000 people in the three west African countries have died from the current Ebola outbreak, according to the CDC.

At the Sunday morning press conference held at the hospital, Dallas County judge Jenkins sought to calm public fears. He said: “I want to stress an important fact. You cannot contract Ebola other than from bodily fluids of a symptomatic Ebola victim. You cannot contract Ebola by walking by people in the street or from contacts who are not symptomatic. There is nothing about this case that changes that basic premise of science.

“And so it’s important that while this is obviously bad news, it is not news that should bring about panic. We have a strategy to monitor this and we will go to that strategy to keep the community safe.”

Those of you who have visited my blog frequently know by now that the U.S. government lies about, or conceals, everything of importance to its citizens and that the so-called mainstream media repeat these lies and remain mum on things our government is doing secretly. Those of you who have followed alterntive news sources know that early on "Dubya" Bush paid Haliburten to construct an archipelago of detainment camps for holding illegal immigrants and "other purposes" ...and that a couple years ago huge numbers of plastic coffins, each large enough to hold several bodies, were discovered outside these compounds. Finally, the current alter media is abuzz with stories of the government deliberately admitting into the U.S. individuals likely to have contracted ebola. Add to that rumors of undergound havens (presumably for the rich and powerful) stocked with ebola antibodies. So be very careful when near strangers and prehaps research and purchase antibodies to protect yourselves.

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http://youtu.be/hlKtUofd2Qg?list=UUvsye7V9psc-APX6wV1twLg


CDC Secretly Panicking Over Ebola

Published on Oct 10, 2014

Alex Jones welcomes Dr. Edward Group to the show and Dr. Group shares some information he got at a conference over how the CDC actually feels about the possibility of an Ebola outbreak.

http://youtu.be/XfkE-7-oJNY?list=UUvsye7V9psc-APX6wV1twLg


CDC Orders Hermetically Sealed Coffins For Ebola Victims

Published on Oct 11, 2014

The CDC has instructed funeral homes to bury Ebola victims in hermetically sealed caskets, a potentially disturbing revelation given reports that the federal agency had previously purchased thousands of air tight coffin liners which were being stored in Madison, Georgia.