She wore a jumpsuit, mask, gloves… and yet, she is infected with the Ebola virus. A caregiver who had participated in the care of the man from Liberia, who died last Wednesday in the United States, was infected. This second case of contamination outside Africa – after that of the Spanish nurse – is causing concern. “We don’t know what happened during the treatment of the index patient, which was the first case treated in Dallas, but at some point there was a flaw in the protocol that caused infection,” said CDC director Dr. Thomas Frieden.
Barack Obama immediately sounded the general alert. In other words, as indicated by the Reuters agency, the President of the United States has ordered the implementation of new measures to verify that the medical services are ready to follow the adequate protocols in the face of Ebola fever.
This new contamination obviously challenges all the caregivers, all the hospitals which take care of the sick. Should the protection measures be reviewed to avoid such “loopholes”? Or is human error in their application inevitable? But this is not the only lesson that can be learned from this new contamination on American soil. “This case confirms what has already been observed in African countries: it is at an advanced stage of the disease that the risk of contagion is greatest”, underlines the daily La Croix. “At the time of death, the body is often a virus bomb”says an infectious disease specialist.
