Air Ambulance official: there’s nothing to fear from Ebola

An official for an air ambulance service on the front lines of health care for Ebola patients said Americans shouldn’t be fearful.

“I think a lot of the hysteria is because it’s mysterious,” said Dent Thompson, vice president of operations for Phoenix Air in Cartersville.

Phoenix Air has received national attention after it began transporting health care workers infected with Ebola from West African countries to western hospitals.

It is the only air ambulance service that can do so, Thompson said.

“Right now, we are the only airline in the world authorized to do this,” Thompson said.

Phoenix Air, which employs 200 people from Cartersville and surrounding areas including Cedartown, has a contract with the State Department to provide air ambulance services to those with known infectious diseases. That includes many other illnesses besides Ebola, Thompson said.

Thompson said the facts are that Americans aren’t at any real risk for Ebola.

Phoenix Air has transported 14 Ebola patients and Thompson said a third of them were flown from African counties to European countries – primarily Germany and France.

The rest came to the United States to highly rated health care facilities. There has been one death in Dallas and that victim’s family was cleared of the disease after their 21-day incubation period expired, he said.

The two nurses associated with that patient are doing well. One remains in isolation.

Thompson said the air service initially worked only international flights, but also included domestic service once the two nurses’ infections were reported in Dallas.

The crew flew one nurse to Atlanta to be treated at Emory Medical Center and flew the other to Bethesda, Md., to be treated at the National Institute of Health.

He said the air transport team has the most experience of anyone to handle these situations.

Phoenix Air has provided air transport in partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for eight years, and have been involved with medical transport for 15 years, he said.

“We’ve moved some sick people on life support all over the world,” he said.

Phoenix Air established equipment, training and procedures for this kind of work, Thompson said. He said the air ambulance’s safety standards “far exceed” federal standards. The State Department and the CDC assisted in implementing proper safety procedures.

“We’re set up to transport for any type of communicable disease. It’s built for diseases far worse than Ebola,” Thompson said. “Working in a diseased environment is not new to us, nor to our medical staff.”

Thompson said Ebola poses little risk for the United States largely because American culture promotes personal space and limited contact.

That is not so in the seven countries where Ebola is striking hard. Thompson said those in West Africa are physically social and their traditions, like bathing the dead as a part of the burial process, have contributed to the spread of the disease.