Travel in affected African countries remains red flag for possible infection
by Andy Marso, KHI News Service
Topeka — Health officials say the chances of the Ebola virus spreading to Kansas are remote, but they are preparing for it anyway.
State officials have developed a Kansas Ebola Preparedness and Response Plan that is based on a more generic infectious disease plan but offers specific guidance on Ebola for the state’s health care providers.
Participants in a recent meeting to review the plan included Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer, a plastic surgeon; Kansas Department of Health and Environment secretary, Dr. Robert Moser, a family physician; and Charlie Hunt, the state epidemiologist.
Sara Belfry, a KDHE spokeswoman, said state officials have worked on Ebola preparedness since August, when American health workers infected while treating patients in West Africa were flown to the United States for treatment.
Health officials say anyone who has traveled to Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria or the Democratic Republic of Congo within the last 21 days and develops a fever should contact a health care provider and disclose their travel history.
But at this time, Belfry said those who have not traveled to the African nations where the virus is spreading have little to fear.
“Ebola poses no substantial risk to the general population in the U.S.,” Belfry said.
Still, a Kaiser Family Foundation poll released Friday found that 45 percent of respondents were worried that they or a family member would contract Ebola, and 22 percent said it was likely there would be a widespread outbreak in the United States.
But health officials say the United States is well-equipped to contain the virus, which does not spread as readily as illnesses like measles or the flu.
Ebola spreads only through contact with the body fluids of those infected and is not contagious until an infected person is symptomatic. The first symptom is fever.
Two health workers and an NBC news cameraman were repatriated to the United States for treatment after acquiring Ebola in West Africa. Thomas Duncan, a Liberian national who traveled to Dallas to visit family, developed symptoms of infection once he arrived in the United States and subsequently died. Two nurses at a Dallas hospital who assisted in his treatment contracted the virus and are being treated. One of them took a flight to Cleveland while she had a mild fever.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has stepped up efforts to isolate and monitor other workers who treated Duncan and may have been exposed. The CDC also has worked to contact those on the flights with the infected nurse and to ensure other health care facilities nationwide are deploying proper protocols if they encounter suspected cases of Ebola.
President Barack Obama on Friday appointed Ron Klain, former chief of staff to vice presidents Al Gore and Joe Biden, to coordinate the federal government’s Ebola response efforts.
Belfry said the state’s recent Ebola preparedness meeting also included officials from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and local health agencies.
Shawnee County health officer Gianfranco Pezzino said he was among those at the meeting who are now educating frontline health care workers about control and containment protocols.
Those protocols, he said, are constantly being improved as officials learn more about previous outbreaks in Africa and the few scattered cases in the United States.
He said health care facilities within Shawnee County are “as ready as we can be” and getting more ready by the day.
“They’re taking it very seriously, and we are too. And we are talking, so that’s a good thing,” Pezzino said. “I think communication is going very well.”
Pezzino – who also works for the Kansas Health Institute, parent organization of the editorially independent KHI News Service – said county health officials met last week with law enforcement officials to discuss quarantine protocols and have talked with the medical community, hospital officials and first responders.
Pezzino said getting new triage protocols – including asking patients immediately about travel history – in place for the smaller, acute care providers who might see patients with fever posed a larger challenge than instituting them in Topeka’s two “top-notch hospitals.”
One of them, Stormont-Vail HealthCare, has tested the protocols. Nancy Burkhardt, a hospital spokeswoman, said multiple patients have been isolated after telling staff they had been to one of the African nations in the midst of an Ebola outbreak. Further examination determined the patients were geographically mistaken or did not have Ebola symptoms.
“I think it should be reassuring that the process is working,” she said. “We are getting a ‘yes’ answer and we are doing what we need to do and then we’re able to rule it out.”
Burkhardt said the extensive media coverage of Ebola has caused some patients with no risk factors to nonetheless worry that they might have it.
“I have heard anecdotally from patient care staff that patients are talking about it,” she said. “We have had a patient or two that has asked the question or wondered, ‘Could I have Ebola?’ So, yes, our staff has had to do some education. They’ve had to reassure patients that if they haven’t traveled to those areas or haven’t had immediate contact with people who traveled to those areas, they don’t have Ebola.”
Burkhardt said members of the public who are feeling worried or helpless can assist health care workers in one key way: get a flu shot.
“The less people we have showing up in our ER with flu-like symptoms, the better able we’ll be to determine if we really do have an Ebola patient,” she said.
Pezzino said that if Shawnee County does get a confirmed case of Ebola, it will be “disruptive” and “scary” for the community. There is no known cure for the virus, though treatments and vaccines are in different phases of testing.
“It’s something to be concerned about,” Pezzino said. “This is a horrible disease. It’s horrible for the people affected and it’s horrible for health care workers to witness any patient with that disease. But they have to balance that concern with the reality that the probability of contracting this disease in our community today is extremely low. It’s not zero, but it’s extremely low.”
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