EpidemicsPublic health officials work to ensure that the lessons of Ebola are not forgotten
Hospitals find it difficult to remain fully prepared for disease outbreaks because they rarely occur and preparation and frequent training are expensive. Public health professionals and infectious disease experts are working to ensure that lessons learned and protocols put in place in response to the Ebola outbreak will be used to prevent and respond to future virus and disease outbreaks.
Public health professionals and infectious disease experts are working to ensure that lessons learned and protocols put in place in response to the Ebola outbreak will be used to prevent and respond to future virus and disease outbreaks. “The mantra is, ‘Don’t be the next Dallas,’” said Dr. Andrew Pavia, chief of pediatric infectious diseases for the University of Utah health system. The Los Angeles Times notes that hospitals strive for a balance between preparation and overreaction when planning for the possibility of an outbreak or a deadly virus like Ebola, the flu, or a less popular infectious disease. “You have to walk that fine line between an event happening and not saying the sky is falling all the time,” said Dr. Katie Passaretti, head of infection prevention at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, North Carolina, where one of the first suspected U.S. Ebola cases was tested.
Many hospital executives admit that their staff were ill-prepared for an Ebola patient when the virus first arrived in the United States via Liberian national, Thomas Eric Duncan. An October survey by the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC) found that only 6 percent of hospitals said they were “well-prepared” for an Ebola patient. 51 percent of the survey respondents said their hospitals had one or no full-time infection control expert on staff. The mistakes made at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, where Duncan was first misdiagnosed and later returned only to die of Ebola, could have occurred at any hospital, according to healthcare professionals. “There was 99.9 percent no planning for this one,” said Dr. Lisa Brosseau, who studies occupational health at the University of Illinois. “I think we are still pretty much playing catch-up.”
Hospitals find it difficult to remain fully prepared for disease outbreaks because they rarely occur and preparation and frequent training are expensive. Additionally, the lessons and difficulties of previous outbreaks tend to be forgotten. “The level of activity that’s required to be a fully prepared hospital is pretty extraordinary,” said Dr. Eric Toner, who studies medical preparedness during outbreaks at the University of Pittsburgh Center for Health Security. “If there’s not a comparable epidemic in another decade or so, a lot of the progress we’ve made will be lost.”
Some states have now designated key hospitals for handling infectious diseases like Ebola, and federal authorities are seeking funding to establish Ebola treatment centers throughout the country to make it easier for authorities to transfer confirmed Ebola patients to well-equipped facilities. In New York, all hospitals will soon be expected to be able to identify early cases of Ebola, then transfer patients to one of eight designated centers for treatment. “Any hospital, no matter how small, must be able to identify a case,” said Linda Greene, a spokeswoman for APIC and an infection prevention manager at the University of Rochester Medical Center, one of New York’s designated treatment hospitals. “This is really a model that’s been in healthcare for a long time — not every hospital can have a burn unit; not every hospital can have a trauma unit. We’re seeing that move into the infectious disease world.”
