CDC: Ebola could rapidly spread beyond West Africa…”The level of outbreak is beyond anything we’ve seen — or even imagined”
Joanna Rothkopf
Salon.com
Tuesday, Sep 2, 2014
Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Thomas Frieden began a press conference on Tuesday with the warning that “the window is closing” on containing the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. “This isn’t just the countries’ problem,” he said. “It’s a global problem.”
The Daily Beast’s Abby Haglage did a thorough write up of Frieden’s statement:
At one particular 35-bed facility, Frieden described the chilling sight of more than three-dozen Ebola patients without beds, left with no other place to fight their infections but the floor. The health care workers, too, face “distressing” conditions. “Roasting hot” personal protective gear including robes, masks, boots, and goggles, make simply drawing an IV a near impossible task. “It is very difficult to move… sweat pours into goggles, [the health workers] see the enormous need but the great risk, too,” he said.” …
Outside of the isolation centers, the burial process poses its own unique challenges. With the bodies of Ebola victims even more contagious after death, those who handle them are put at great risk of infection. In his travels, Frieden recalled meeting with young men of a burial team working well past 10 p.m. in full protective gear to bury Ebola casualties. After close to 15-hours of grueling work wrapping the bodies, sanitizing them with bleach, and lowering them six feet into the ground, many return home to families who have ostracized them for fear they carry the infection, forcing them to sleep outside on the ground.
The Rest…HERE
