SPAIN WARNS "SOMETHING WENT WRONG" AS SUSPECTED EBOLA CASES RISE IN MADRID

Spain Warns "Something Went Wrong" As Suspected Ebola Cases Rise In Madrid

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/07/2014 12:14 -0400


Despite being described by Spain's public health director as "a national jewel," the head of Spain's Nursing Council warns "something went wrong" in the health care system's protocols. As RT reports, Spanish health officials have 4 patients interned including infected initial nurse, her husband, and a 2nd nurse (male). Furthermore, 22 more possible Ebola cases are under surveillance having had direct contact with the infected nurse during her vacation after being infected (officials have said they 'don't know' how she became infected with the deadly virus). Images within the hospital show "irregularities" and make-shift isolation units and an insider account said "I do not want to create social alarm, but explain what is still a reality everyday for a few months of nursing staff at the ICU.". One researcher noted "air traffic is the driver.," and added ominously, "it's just a matter of who gets lucky and who gets unlucky."



As RT reports,

Health officials in Madrid say three more people are in the hospital on suspicion of contracting Ebola. The news comes a day after a nurse who treated two Ebola patients at a city hospital became infected with the disease.



The nurse is now being treated with a drip using antibodies from those previously infected with the virus, Reuters reports. Approximately 22 contacts of the woman, often referred to as the 'Spanish Ebola nurse,' have been identified and are being monitored, Madrid health officials told a press conference on Tuesday.



The officials added that the hospitalized include the nurse's husband, another health worker and a traveler who had spent time in one of he affected West African countries.

Spanish authorities are struggling to explain the infection, as The Daily Mail reports

"At the moment we are investigating the way in which the professional was infected," said Antonio Alemany, the head of Madrid's primary health care services.



"We don't know yet what failed," he was quoted by the Guardian as saying. "We're investigating the mechanism of infection."



Mercedes Vinuesa, the head of Spain's public health service, told parliament today that the nurse's husband had been placed in quarantine.

And, as RT reports, in a similar vein to Dallas, it appears local hospitals were anything but prepared for this...

Spanish authorities have come under increasing pressure to explain how the disease was able to spread in their hopital. While they say all proper protocols and procedure were followed while providing care to the deceased missionaries, reports to the contrary have surfaced.



According to the Guardian, staff at the hospital said waste from the rooms of both patients had been carried out in the same elevator used by all personnel. The hospital was also reportedly not evacuated when the second patient, García Viejo, was taken in to receive treatment.



Union workers also accused the government of providing hospital staff with adequate hazmat-suits.



Some Spanish medical-worker representatives said the situation should prompt an overhaul of the procedures and facilities used to treat those afflicted with the virus.



“Something went wrong,” Máximo Gonzalez Jurado, head of Spain’s General Nursing Council, told Spanish news agency EFE. “They need to establish if the protocol is correct or not correct so that a case like this, that never should have happened, doesn’t happen again.”

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"Air traffic is the driver," warns Professor Alessandro Vespignani of Northeastern University in Boston...predicting where the virus will spread...

There is a 50 per cent chance a traveller carrying the disease could touch down in the UK by October 24, a team of U.S. researchers have predicted.



Using Ebola spread patterns and airline traffic data they have calculated the odds of the virus spreading across the world.



They estimate there is a 75 per cent chance Ebola will reach French shores by October 24.


And Belgium has a 40 per cent chance of seeing the disease arrive on its territory, while Spain and Switzerland have lower risks of 14 per cent each.


'It's just a matter of who gets lucky and who gets unlucky."

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An insider whistle-blows on the weakness in Spanish anti-Ebola protocls (via Google Translate)

I am a nurse in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the Hospital La Paz. The reason for addressing you.'s To inform the public the facts that have happened recently regarding the "Crisis of the Ebola virus" opinion. Do not want to create social alarm, but tell what is still a reality in everyday for a few months of nursing staff the ICU among which I include ago.

Since the hospital was named La Paz as a reference center for the diagnosis and treatment of HIV infection in April 2014, the staff has been showing its disconfor to that measure and irregularities have been committing the direction of nursing the hospital as a whole. (See attachment Notification Judge).

These irregularities summarize, focus on that:

• The hospital does not have adequate infrastructure to enter patients affected with this type of disease (the famous isolation rooms with negative pressure).

• The original protocols of the Ministry of Health were modified to fit like the gaps that had the hospital: If you do not have "negative pressure" we say "as far as is demonstrated airborne transmission is not necessary."

• General (modified or not) protocols are not handed to staff for knowledge, nor were exposed at various meetings with management nursing.

• As ICU care were demanding the implementation of specific protocols UCI (Today still not exist or at least personnel have not arrived)

• Staff training requires the completion of courses and training to work in situations like this.

• The Department of Preventive Medicine Hospital offers two informative talks (45 minutes) of such as personal protective equipment required. In those talks and the inexperience of the same staff that taught, costumes torn apart, replaced the shims for plastic bags, there were no complete SCUBA and coming to say more or less I had to do a hack to cover his face with masking tape.

Without being solved any of these issues by the Department of the hospital, you will hanging out and communicating to staff that will be the Hospital of the defense "Gómez Ulla" who takes these emergencies but as it is in the process of reform to create appropriate facilities, until the month of October will remain referral hospital.

...

Finally only remains to emphasize that in all this there is a lot of improvisation and a lot of reckless attitude of those who truly, really ... NOT going to be ahead of the virus at him in the face. Listen to those who are on the front line have something to say.

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