EbolaTexas Medical Center considering “reverse quarantine” to prevent Ebola infections
The Texas Medical Center(TMC), home to more than fifty health care institutions (it is considered the world’s largest medical district), is considering using a preventive measure, known as reverse quarantine, to keep potentially at-risk employees and students from spreading Ebola to other medical staff or patients. Concerned that the Ebola outbreak could reach Texas, hospital executives are reviewing their emergency management plans, usually reserved to guide more than 100,000 employees at TMC during hurricanes and tropical storms.
The Texas Medical Center (TMC), home to more than fifty health care institutions (it is considered the world’s largest medical district), is considering using a preventive measure, known as reverse quarantine, to keep potentially at-risk employees and students from spreading Ebola to other medical staff or patients. Concerned that the Ebola outbreak could reach Texas, hospital executives are reviewing their emergency management plans, usually reserved to guide more than 100,000 employees at TMC during hurricanes and tropical storms.
The reserve quarantine was once used on Dr. Tom Wheeler, when he returned to Houston from a visit in Mexico in 2009, during the height of the H1N1 epidemic. Upon his return, the Baylor College of Medicine’s (BCM) pathology chief was told by his employer to stay home for a day before he returned to work. “I was just told to stay at home, no special precautions,” said Wheeler. “I came to work the next day.”
TMC attracts thousands of students, and healthcare professionals from around the world, putting the campus at risk for Ebola. Dr. Kenneth Mattox, Ben Taub Hospital’s chief of staff and a distinguished service professor at BCM, who have helped advise nearby hospitals on emergency management during hurricanes, proposed that BCM staff who have traveled to West Africa, should stay away from patients upon their return to Houston for twenty-one days. “I have recommended that there be strong consideration that this be done in the interest of public health,” Mattox told theTexas Tribune on Monday. BCM has not decided on whether to take that approach. “The reverse quarantine Dr. Mattox mentioned is one option, but no policy has been put in place at Baylor College of Medicine at this time,” said Glenna Picton, a spokeswoman for the college.
University of Texas Health Science Center (UTHSC), which is also located in TMC, is advising the school’s health officer to contact students returning to campus from West Africa, and urge them to look for symptoms including fever, headache, joint and muscle aches, weakness, vomiting, and diarrhea. “Our primary concern was the notion that we have faculty or students who might have traveled to this area,” said Robert Emery, UTHSC’s vice president of safety, health, environment and risk management. “If you have traveled, these are things we would like you to do.”
