If “the protocols work,” how did Dallas nurse get Ebola?

Monday, October 13, 2014
By Paul Martin

CBS News
October 13, 2014

When the first U.S. Ebola patient turned up at a Dallas hospital late last month, public health officials were quick to reassure the public that the health care system was prepared to handle it and prevent the deadly disease from spreading.

“We are stopping Ebola in its tracks in this country,” Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said on Sept. 30, after Dallas patient Thomas Eric Duncan’s Ebola test came back positive. “We can do that because of two things: strong infection control that stops the spread of Ebola in health care; and strong core public health functions.”

But news that a nurse who treated Duncan became infected in the process has cast doubt on whether those safety precautions were good enough or were properly followed. The nurse at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital was wearing full protective gear when she treated Duncan, but somehow got infected anyway. Frieden said Sunday that the CDC was conducting an investigation into what went wrong, to try to prevent it from happening again.

“It is deeply concerning that this infection occurred,” Frieden acknowledged. “We don’t know what occurred… but at some point there was a breach in protocol and that breach in protocol resulted in this infection.”

The reality is, even when health care workers know the proper steps, small — but potentially deadly — lapses can still happen.

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