Ebola's here everybody

I think people need to calm down about this latest news regarding this latest incident. The fact is this virus is not air borne, it is transmitted through close contact with bodily fluids. Even if an infected person sneezed on you, the fluid would have to land in your mouth, in your eyes or an open wound to have even a remote chance of passing on the infection. Sufferers in this country have much higher survival rates due to better medical expertise in the UK. The Royal Free have actual hands on experience of successfully treating this disease which is why I suspect the nurse is being transferred to London.

Lets remember this lady is an NHS nurse who volunteered to go and help others far more disadvantaged than we are and she should be given the very best care available.

 

People could be quarantined in this country, having been brought home in specially controlled conditions, not on a commercial passenger flight.

I'm not suggesting she should be treat like some sort of criminal. Just that it should be a routine measure that anyone who has had close exposure to ebola victims should be kept seperate from everyone else until they've had time to show symptoms (or not). We've already had one ebola patient here in the past. He was brought home on a military plane equipped with everything necesarry to prevent the spread of infection. I'm sure he wasn't treat like a criminal. Of course there is the expense. It must cost a lot more to take a military plane with all the controls, than just jump on the next commercial flight, but if governments are as serious about controlling this as they say they are, then surely they would make it practical.

Quarantine (I like the concept but I hate the word) would not have to be like prison. We have plenty of military bases in the UK that are effectively self contained villages. I'm sure one of them could be emptied of non-essential personnel and turned into a temporary quarantine site where people would have all the freedom to go out for walks, pop to a shop, go for a pint, have somewhere nice to sleep etc for a few weeks after returning. Yes it still limits liberty to some extent, but then so does ebola I guess.

Indeed she should. As should all those that put themselves at risk to do such fantastic work. But here's something that is often overlooked. It is not in the least bit unusual to ask people to expect to be isolated in certain conditions due to the nature of their work. When I was working at at the chemical works, in one of the many safety briefings I had to attend, it was explained to us what happens if we suspect we've been accidentally exposed to certain extremely nasty chemicals. It was explained that we do NOT run straight to the nearest first centre on site, but instead that we put ourselves in one of the isolation cubicles, where there is a phone so we can tell people we are there, and then someone will come out to us with full hazard gear on. Ok, you wouldn't be in there for weeks, but you would be 'contained' until you were decontaminated and it would not be nice.

 

This nurse Pauline Cafferkey that has Ebola must have done something wrong as the photos in the Daily Wail show her to be dressed up from head to toe in the protection gear so she must have come into contact somehow to become infected

That said,a nurse who died from it a few months ago made the mistake of brushing away a tear from the cheek of an infected child and it cost her her life

 

There's suggestions that Ebola would thrive more in a colder climate (like what flu does) as it will last longer outside of a host in cooler climes, and might even manage to go airborne, but it's dificult to seperate fact from fiction.

 

I understand what you are saying CL but you are comparing an immediate threat to dangerous chemicals to an individual who only becomes a risk in the later stages of the disease, when perhaps she starts vomiting. As this is the first recording case of a diagnosis in the UK, the measures in place must be working on the whole.

That may not be the way she contracted it, we will never know for sure, she could have made other mistakes. Have you seen the state of the treatment centres in these countries, I seen better veterinary practices!

 

After reading Harry's link above, we have a much bigger threat to worry about and that is the risk of rabies. This is now a real worry thanks to the illegal puppy trade and trafficking of animals from Eastern Europe. These poor animals are often from horrific farms, are removed from their mother too early, not properly vaccinated and have forged paperwork. I'm more worried about this.

 

But that's my point. Ebola doesn't present symptoms immediately, which is why I think its appropriate to exercise a lot more caution than is currently the case.

The example I gave with the chemical contamination situation was meant to highlight that 'human rights' or 'civil liberties' are routinely overlooked in industry in a crisis, and if that is ok, then why is it not ok to ask that someone with exposure to deadly diseases is temporarily accommodated somewhere nice but isolated from the wider community? At the chemical plant, the isolation procedure is invoked not if you have been but if you suspect you may have been exposed. The chemical plant procedure is much more harsh than asking someone to stay away from the general public, in that you would be isolated all alone in a cubicle, and you're going nowhere until someone gives the all clear.

There is also the lock down situation. That happened once while I was working there. Alarms started sounding, and the public address system told us all to stay put as it was a chemical leak alert. We were only locked up for a few hours but I was told in casual conversation by people who'd been there for much longer that it could potentially be days. I was gasping for a smoke, and had literally just got up out of my seat to set of to the smoking shelter when the alarm sounded. That's like a quarantine situation, and you have far less liberty than what I'm suggesting for people who have been exposed to ebola patients. In our case we couldn't even go outside. The smokers couldn't even go for a smoke. But this was also just precautionary. The alarms sound automatically when certain sensors pick up abnormal signals. We had no idea what had tripped the alarm or how long we'd be locked in for. It turned out that there'd been a small gas explosion when some engineering work had gone wrong. Nobody was hurt, and no nasty chemicals had escaped, but just as a routine precaution, until we knew one way or the other, we were going nowhere.

 

In that case CL would you suggest we round up everyone with HIV and put them in your Isolation village too?

 

It sure is a scary thing Ebola landing on our doorstep...Lets hope it doesn't get out of hand now

 

At the end of the day,us mere mortals don't know the half of it and probably never will.I'll go so far as to say back when there was a' high alert' for treating MRSA many 'quarantine' orders were put in place with strict barrier nursing but that's gone by the wayside now,so who knows how this is going to progress.

 

There are other health threats out there, and the way the world is these days any of them could become a problem for us in the UK.
Years ago, with less travel etc. these things tended to not move around the world quite so much.

But whether Ebola could be come an epidemic here really is unknown, I guess, and I think the "experts" are guessing also.

Nothing to worry about, just put her in a sealed ambulance and rush her 500 miles to hospital.

 

Don't know about other hospitals but NGH (Northampton General Hospital) where Mr Kandys dad is residing has large bottles of Antiseptic sprays plastered all over the place especially near doorways and signs up telling everyone to use them.Every bed on my Father In Laws ward has two of those large bottles hanging at the end of them which the visitors can use and the nurses all wear fresh disposable gloves each time they come round to do anything with the patients

Hopefully this bug will be treated with speed and the infected people get over it quiet quickly before it has the chance to do any damage to the population in general

 

Sure is a lot of protective clothing for something that seemingly is quite difficult to catch.

Never said a truer word!!! Do you imagine they would tell us if they discovered it was now airborne Personally, I don't think the authorities are taking this seriously enough!!

 

@Val,read the article in today's Daily Mail on line and you will read on there the cock ups with this Ebola virus and how it can get out of control even in the UK