By Caribbean Medical News Staff
According to the sister of the US’ first Ebola patient diagnosed in the US, despite revealing that the 42 year old male had flown via Brussels through Washington to Dallas from Liberia on his first trip to the US, he was sent home and not admitted.
According to the sister, he fell ill and turned up at the hospital he first Ebola patient diagnosed in the U.S. initially went to a Dallas on emergency room last week but was sent home, despite telling a nurse that he had been in disease-ravaged West Africa.
The hospital has acknowledged that a nurse was given the information but this information was not passed on and according to reports on CNN, the man was sent home diagnosed with a “viral illness” with antibiotics and pain killers.
According to reports, the decision by Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital to release him could have put many others at risk of exposure to the disease. He has had two days of contact with children who are now being monitored, as well as every contact that the man has had since his arrival and illness in the US.
He returned to the ER at the Dallas hospital when his condition worsened, was isolated and quarantined. Texas Gov. Perry hosted a press conference and stated that every effort would be made to save the man’s life as well as conduct contact tracing and monitoring to contain the illness.
Thomas Eric Duncan (the patient) explained to a nurse Friday that he was visiting the U.S. from Liberia, but that information was not widely shared, said Dr. Mark Lester, who works for the hospital’s parent company.
Family had to call CDC to get help
Thomas Eric Duncan’s told a nurse that he had arrived from Liberia but according to Dr, Mark Lester, who works for the parent company for the hospital ‘this was not fully communicated’’ throughout the hospital’s medical team.
Duncan’s sister Mai Wureh told the Associated Press that the family had to call the Centres for Disease Control to get her brother admitted to the Dallas Hospital who has had contact with five school-aged children and a total of 12 people so far.
A he team from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was flown in Dallas to work with local and state health agencies to ensure that those people are monitored daily for 21 days.
‘‘If anyone develops fever, we’ll immediately isolate them to stop the chain of transmission,’’ Dr. Thomas Frieden, the CDC director, said in an interview.
Duncan has been kept in isolation at the hospital since Sunday. He was listed in serious but stable condition having been upgraded to serious from critical.
Officials are monitoring 12 to 18 people who may have been exposed to the man, including three members of the ambulance crew that transported him to the hospital and five schoolchildren.
According to the WHO, Ebola is believed to have sickened more than 7,100 people in West Africa with more than 3,300 deaths have been linked to the disease, according to the World Health Organization.
There has been no confirmation from the hospital that Mr. Duncan has received any of the experimental drug ZMapp. In fact, it is unlikely that he is receiving the drug since the CDC said that there were only 12 sets of the medication which have since be used.
