Underfunding behind Spanish hospital failure to isolate Ebola vicitim
Spanish nurse Teresa Ramos was reportedly separated only by curtains from other patients at a Madrid hospital where she was tested for the Ebola virus. The country’s underfunded health service is under fire for its “inadequate” response.
Ebola spread 'unavoidable' in Europe due to extensive travel – WHO
Ramos, 44, who tested positive for Ebola, was not immediately accepted to the central Carlos III hospital, where she came to report possible symptoms of the deadly virus, and where Ebola patients have previously received treatment, Diario Enfermero (Nurse Journal) has reported. She was instead sent to her local medical facility – the Alcorcón hospital, also in the Spanish capital.
There, the woman was reportedly “for hours” only
separated by curtains from the rest of the patients while waiting
for her Ebola test results, according to the hospital staff. The
nurses allegedly attended her without any protective clothing on.
The report has been issued at a time when the country’s
healthcare officials have increasingly come under fire from trade
unions over "inadequate” efforts in tackling the Ebola
virus.
Bringing the infected missionaries from Africa to Spain was a
“completely improvised hospital campaign,” said Elena
Moral, a spokesperson for the Independent Trade Union of
Employees (CSI-F), El Pais reported.
"We did not have the infrastructure to deal with a virus of
this magnitude," she said.
Healthcare activists report that Madrid’s authorities decided to
"dismantle" the infectious diseases center at the Carlos
III hospital just months before the Ebola patients were brought
there.
The “dismantling” has led to Ebola being “treated in a
place that did not meet adequate security conditions,” according
to a spokesman for the Public Health Service Defense Federation,
Dr Marciano Sánchez Bayle.
“The whole section devoted to infectious illnesses has been
closed,” he explained in an interview with Euronews.
“The professionals who worked there have been moved to other
positions. The laboratory was closed, and so was the intensive
care unit. It’s just to say that, one way or another, its
capacity to take care of illnesses with these characteristics has
been most remarkably reduced.”
Trade unions have called for the resignations of health officials
of various levels from the hospital management to Health Minister
Ana Mato. There have also been calls for President of the
Community of Madrid, Ignacio Gonzalez, to step down over the
decision to "dismantle" the infectious disease section
of Carlos III hospital.
Ebola: Evolution of an epidemic (INTERACTIVE MAP)
Ramos treated two Ebola-infected missionaries who were brought
from Sierra Leone and Liberia to Spain and eventually died in
hospital.
On Tuesday, four more people were hospitalized in Spain on
suspicion they could have contracted the disease. Two of them
have since tested negative for Ebola.
Unions have complained of poor training and inadequate protective
clothing the medical staff received before having to take care of
Ebola patients.
There have also been reports that waste from the rooms of the
infected patients was carried out in the same elevator used by
all personnel.
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy was grilled by Congress on
Wednesday on whether the government could guarantee the Ebola
virus was under control in the country.
"We are facing an issue of concern and rightly so,”
Rajoy said as cited by El Mundo. He added that “a monitoring
committee has been created” to “investigate what happened and
explain the whole to the public.”
The PM asked Spnaiards to be "be vigilant, while keeping
calm" concerning the Ebola virus, following reports that the
country has been unprepared to tackle the virus.
One of the discoverers of Ebola, Peter Piot, a professor at the
London School of Tropical Medicine, has warned that treating
those infected by the virus demands draconian discipline.
"It should be a lesson for everybody that you can't
overreact. You can't overprotect," he told a WHO science
group teleconference, Reuters reported.
