MHSC
Senior Moderator
MSF on Ebola: ?This is the Biggest Outbreak We?ve Ever Known?
September 9, 2014, 9:03 pm ET by Priyanka Boghani
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Doctors Without Borders, or M?decins Sans Fronti?res (MSF) as it is known internationally, began its Ebola intervention in March 2014, and now runs five Ebola management centers in the affected countries.
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And this is the Zaire strain of the Ebola virus, correct?
Yes. The other thing is it presented with symptoms a little different from usual, so a lot of gastroenterological symptoms like vomiting, diarrhea.
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If you?re going to do a rumor check or assess a suspected case in a village, what we do is we don?t talk to the patient straight in front of them. We?re at more or less arm?s-length, talking to the side of the patient because of the risk of contagion by droplet. And we have gloves if we?re going to touch the patient, otherwise no. At this point we?re not using masks, unless we know that a patient is coughing a lot or vomiting.
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When we?re in the triage area in either Ebola facilities or non-Ebola facilities, it varies a little bit, but we?re wearing scrubs, rubber boots, gloves, a mask and goggles most of the time to protect all of the mucuses.
...
When we go into the [isolation] ward, we?re wearing full personal protective equipment, which means a Tyvek hazmat suit with a hood on top of it. The suit has a hood that comes with it, but we use another hood that covers the full head, the face, and has a mask, but we wear a mask underneath that as well. And then we have goggles on top of that, double or triple gloves, and boots, and an apron on top of that.
For the burials, when we?re preparing the body we also wear a full protective suit, and once the body is in two body bags that have been sprayed we can actually carry it wearing scrubs, rubber gloves and boots.
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The moment a person dies is when their viral load is considered to be extremely high and all secretions are extremely contagious. That?s one of the things we?ve tried to do, is have trained burial teams so that the burials are done in an appropriate way. You have to handle the body in full protective equipment, spray the body, put it in a body bag, spray the body bag, put it in another body bag, spray the other body bag, and then burn all of the contaminated materials ? sheets, clothes, mattress, buckets if a patient has been vomiting.
When you can access a patient it?s challenging, but it?s doable. The problem is you can?t always access the deceased before the family has started the cleansing of the body.
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We don?t really know what the number of deaths are, and if the differences in mortality is just what we?re seeing, or if the virus is actually behaving a little differently. ? The Zaire strain has one of the highest mortalities, but it has varied from one outbreak to the next. ? I highly doubt that the virus will behave differently in the different settings, but that there?s a different awareness and access to healthcare in each of these countries.
The borders are still extremely porous...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/front...this-is-the-biggest-outbreak-weve-ever-known/
September 9, 2014, 9:03 pm ET by Priyanka Boghani
...
Doctors Without Borders, or M?decins Sans Fronti?res (MSF) as it is known internationally, began its Ebola intervention in March 2014, and now runs five Ebola management centers in the affected countries.
...
And this is the Zaire strain of the Ebola virus, correct?
Yes. The other thing is it presented with symptoms a little different from usual, so a lot of gastroenterological symptoms like vomiting, diarrhea.
...
If you?re going to do a rumor check or assess a suspected case in a village, what we do is we don?t talk to the patient straight in front of them. We?re at more or less arm?s-length, talking to the side of the patient because of the risk of contagion by droplet. And we have gloves if we?re going to touch the patient, otherwise no. At this point we?re not using masks, unless we know that a patient is coughing a lot or vomiting.
....
When we?re in the triage area in either Ebola facilities or non-Ebola facilities, it varies a little bit, but we?re wearing scrubs, rubber boots, gloves, a mask and goggles most of the time to protect all of the mucuses.
...
When we go into the [isolation] ward, we?re wearing full personal protective equipment, which means a Tyvek hazmat suit with a hood on top of it. The suit has a hood that comes with it, but we use another hood that covers the full head, the face, and has a mask, but we wear a mask underneath that as well. And then we have goggles on top of that, double or triple gloves, and boots, and an apron on top of that.
For the burials, when we?re preparing the body we also wear a full protective suit, and once the body is in two body bags that have been sprayed we can actually carry it wearing scrubs, rubber gloves and boots.
...
The moment a person dies is when their viral load is considered to be extremely high and all secretions are extremely contagious. That?s one of the things we?ve tried to do, is have trained burial teams so that the burials are done in an appropriate way. You have to handle the body in full protective equipment, spray the body, put it in a body bag, spray the body bag, put it in another body bag, spray the other body bag, and then burn all of the contaminated materials ? sheets, clothes, mattress, buckets if a patient has been vomiting.
When you can access a patient it?s challenging, but it?s doable. The problem is you can?t always access the deceased before the family has started the cleansing of the body.
...
We don?t really know what the number of deaths are, and if the differences in mortality is just what we?re seeing, or if the virus is actually behaving a little differently. ? The Zaire strain has one of the highest mortalities, but it has varied from one outbreak to the next. ? I highly doubt that the virus will behave differently in the different settings, but that there?s a different awareness and access to healthcare in each of these countries.
The borders are still extremely porous...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/front...this-is-the-biggest-outbreak-weve-ever-known/