Africa Resilience Initiative

REUTERS                         Oct 3. 2014

By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Nurses, the frontline care providers in U.S. hospitals, say they are untrained and unprepared to handle patients arriving in their hospital emergency departments infected with Ebola.

Many say they have gone to hospital managers, seeking training on how to best care for patients and protect themselves and their families from contracting the deadly disease....

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has repeatedly said that U.S. hospitals are prepared to handle such patients. Many infectious disease experts agree with that assessment.

... Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas that is now caring for the first Ebola patient to be diagnosed in this country had completed Ebola training just before Thomas Eric Duncan arrived in their emergency department on Sept. 26. But despite being told that Duncan had recently traveled from Liberia, hospital staff failed to recognize the Ebola risk and sent him home, where he spent another two days becoming sicker and more infectious.

NEW YORK TIMES          Oct. 3, 2014

DALLAS TEX.      

On Thursday, the hospital, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, released a statement essentially blaming a flaw in its electronic health records system for its decision to send the patient — Thomas E. Duncan, a Liberian national visiting his girlfriend and relatives in the United States — home the first time he visited its emergency room, Sept. 25. It said there were separate “workflows” for doctors and nurses in the records so the doctors did not receive the information that he had come from Africa.

But on Friday evening, the hospital effectively retracted that portion of its statement, saying that “there was no flaw” in its electronic health records system. The hospital said “the patient’s travel history was documented and available to the full care team in the electronic health record (E.H.R.), including within the physician’s workflow.”

cnn.com - October 1, 2014

CNN's Jake Tapper speaks to Gavin Macgregor-Skinner and Jeffery Stern. With the first Ebola diagnosis in the U.S., is the country prepared to handle a potential outbreak?

http://thelead.blogs.cnn.com/2014/10/01/only-four-u-s-hospitals-prepared-for-outbreak/

BBC            October 3, 2014

A hospital in the German city of Frankfurt-on-Main has taken in an Ebola patient after he was flown in during the night under tight security.

He is a Ugandan doctor who worked with Ebola patients in Sierra Leone. After arriving on a medical flight, the man was brought to Frankfurt University Hospital where he was placed in an isolation ward.

It is Germany's second case, with a man undergoing treatment in Hamburg after arriving from West Africa in August.

The Frankfurt hospital said the patient's arrival had gone well.

Hesse Minister of Social Affairs Stefan Gruettner said the patient had been working for an Italian aid organisation in Sierra Leone and had helped Ebola sufferers there before becoming infected himself.

Full Story
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29473623

Medical staff in protective equipment attend the arrival of the Ebola patient at Frankfurt University Hospital