A second nurse at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, the hospital where Thomas Eric Duncan became the first Ebola fatality in the U.S., has tested positive for Ebola. With that news comes the revelation that the hospital was ill-prepared to handle such an infectious disease, and that it was learning the Ebola protocols as it was trying to treat Duncan. This is simply not good enough. When it comes to contagious diseases like ebola, or more recently coronavirus, having set protocols that need to be followed, as well as essential protective equipment like disposable gowns, (see here for more information) has never been more important. So, learning about the protocols whilst issuing treatment is potentially putting even more individuals at risk. That’s confirmed by a CDC epidemiologist who was dispatched to the hospital this weekend to debrief staff, and nursing staff there as well.
In a conference call with journalists late Tuesday, the labor organization National Nurses United read a statement that it said came from nurses at the hospital who “strongly feel unsupported, unprepared, lied to and deserted to handle their own situation.”
The statement alleged that guidelines for handling the Ebola patient were constantly changing, and that for two days after Duncan was admitted to isolation the nurses were given personal protective equipment that left their necks exposed. The organization did not name the nurses or say how many contributed to the statement.
What’s clear is that Texas Presbyterian was not prepared to deal with such a contagious disease. Why, we’re not sure, but you can bet everything in your bank account that just about any local hospital would be in the same boat. And what is undoubtedly a factor in that is the massive budget cuts to public health programs in the U.S. in the last decade. If those budget cuts hadn’t of happened, hospitals might be able to purchase more suitable PPE Equipment and supplies, making them well prepared.
We can start with the NIH cuts, which the agency’s director says delayed development of an Ebola vaccine. “Frankly, if we had not gone through our 10-year slide in research support, we probably would have had a vaccine in time for this that would’ve gone through clinical trials and would have been ready,” he told Huffington Post.
But here at home, two programs that deal directly with emergency preparedness for hospitals have been cut. The CDC’s emergency preparedness program, which provides funding and staff in state and local health departments. In just the last six years, more than 45,700 jobs were lost in state and local health departments because of federal funding cuts. Additionally, the Hospital Preparedness Program, a state-federal cooperative administered by the Department of Health and Human Services has been slashed. In 2003, its budget was $520 million. In 2014 and 2015, it’s $255 million.
Those are two programs which should have been ready in Dallas, Texas, (or anywhere else in the country) to help Texas Presbyterian respond immediately and effectively to an Ebola patient showing up on its doorstep. We don’t know what their role in this case was, if they had one. But we do know that both programs have been decimated by Republicans who have held the federal budget hostage for the last six years.
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The CDC has had $1 billion less for infectious disease control in 2013 than it had in 2002. The NIH hasn’t developed an Ebola vaccine, and Liberia and Sierra Leone are in crisis because of it. There are nearly 46,000 fewer public health workers in the field in the U.S. And Republicans-who largely caused this crisis-are trying to fearmonger about Ebola killing us all.
