Making plans they hope they’ll never have to use
Health officials discuss Ebola precautions in Sask.
The big lesson from two cases of Ebola virus infecting two Texas nurses is that health-care workers need to “exercise the utmost care” in removing contaminated personal protective equipment, Saskatchewan’s deputy chief medical health officer said Thursday.
“If you look at what’s happened in Texas, we’re all learning from that experience,” said Dr. Denise Werker. She said the provincial health ministry still considers Ebola occurring here a “low-probability event”, but added planning has been taking place since the outbreak in West Africa in August because “such a case could be very devastating.”
But she said that Ebola transmits only through contact with bodily fluids, and people need to be “well into their disease before they become very, very infectious.”
“But because the mortality for this disease is so high, we are obviously very concerned.”
In a wide-ranging news conference, Werker said Regina General Hospital and Saskatoon’s Royal University Hospital have been designated as the hospitals receiving suspected cases of Ebola, with a suspected case “treated as a real case until it’s confirmed.”
That confirmation would come through the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg.
Protective gear “for the most part, is already in place,” though she conceded more training in wearing it is needed.
Acknowledging a request from the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses for upgraded protective equipment, she said the health ministry must talk with health-care regions and unions to reach a point “where healthcare workers feel comfor t abl e ” with gear and procedures.
Dr. Tania Diener, medical health officer for the Regina Qu’Appelle Health Region — where planning has been taking place since August — said in an interview later that the region will hold an exercise next week in which a simulated patient will arrive by ambulance and be moved through various units of the hospital.
A written plan is one thing, “but it’s really important to test it in practice,” she said.
Since Ebola came onto the public health agenda in August, Werker said the health ministry has been distributing diagnostic and risk-assessment information to hospital emergency departments and primary health-care providers and laying out a plan for them to consult with designated specialists, then “stand back and put something on” before isolating a patient in a separate room.
Werker, who’s seen Ebola and other infectious diseases up close in Angola and Mozambique, said “the risk isn’t increasing just because there’s Ebola in Texas.”
What’s more disturbing is that the outbreak in West Africa “is not getting any better.”
She also learned that workers must be not only trained in wearing that gear, but feel comfortable in it. “I know from personal experience that it’s not nice having to do a patient assessment if you haven’t been trained.”