Guinea

ASSOCIATED PRESS                    Oct. 15, 2010

DALLAS — A second health care worker at a Dallas hospital who provided care for the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the U.S. has tested positive for the disease, the Texas Department of State Health Services said Wednesday.

The department said in a statement that the worker reported a fever Tuesday and was immediately isolated at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas. Health officials said the worker was among those who took care of Thomas Eric Duncan, who was diagnosed with Ebola after coming to the U.S. from Liberia. Duncan died Oct. 8.

The department said a preliminary Ebola test was conducted late Tuesday at a state public health laboratory in Austin, Texas, and came back positive during the night. Confirmatory testing was being conducted at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

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http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/national/southwest/2014/10/texas_dept_2nd_health_care_worker_tests_positive_for_ebola

NEW YORK TIMES                                                                                        OCT. 14, 2014

By SABRINA TAVERNISE                        

During a tense discussion, Dr. Jim Yong Kim, the World Bank president, spoke sharply to Dr. Margaret Chan, the head of the World Health Organization, the agency in charge. You have the authority to act in this emergency, he told her, according to people familiar with the meeting, “so why aren’t you doing it?”

WASHINGTON POST

By Todd C. Frankel                         October 14

....The Dallas nurse, 26-year old Nina Pham,who helped treat Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian man who was the first person diagnosed with the dreaded disease in the United States became the first – and so far only – person infected by Duncan. In the wake of her infection, U.S. health officials have pledged to review how future Ebola cases are handled.

But the case is also noteworthy for another, potentially positive reason: Nearly 50 people were exposed to Ebola before the nurse, and none of them has been diagnosed with the disease.

This group of neighbors, family members and first responders are being watched carefully by health authorities. They had some degree of close contact with Duncan during the four-day period when he was contagious – from when he started showing Ebola symptoms on Sept. 24 to when the hospital finally admitted him on Sept. 28. They didn’t take any Ebola-specific precautions. They didn’t know he was infected.... Yet, so far, they have not gotten sick. And their 21-day Ebola incubation period started before Pham’s.

An Ebola health worker is decontaminated at a Médecins sans Frontières unit in Monrovia in Liberia.
Photograph: Pascal Guyot/AFP/Getty Images

theguardian.com - by Bridget Mulrooney, Sue Ellen Kovack and Anine Kongelf - October 13, 2014

Bridget Mulrooney, 36
American nurse working for the International Medical Corps in Bong County, Liberia

I was working as a travel nurse at a children’s hospital in California when I got an email from International Medical Corps asking if I was interested in deploying to Liberia to help fight Ebola. I wanted to go immediately but I was locked into a contract at the time. The more I heard, the more excited I got.

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