i have a "fake"disaster scenario about an outbreak of Ebola on an island. any ideas on how to prevent it?
A 23 Year old Peace Corp intern was working in the Congo for the last 8 weeks.
•Returns to the USA via JFK Airport, feels tired and fatigued but thinks it is probably jet lag; he also has a slight cough.
•Takes public transportation from the airport to his apartment in Manhattan.
•Unpacks, feels feverish, and the malaise increases.
•Goes out to dinner with a few friends to welcome him back.
•His parents live in Staten Island.
•Takes the subway, ferry and bus to visit his parents.
•Begins feeling worse, eyes are blood shot, begins coughing up blood, and has some bloody diarrhea.
•Parents take him to the Hospital, where he sits in the Emergency waiting room with the other patients for 45 minutes.
•The admitting resident does not suspect anything too serious.
•Eventually he has bloods drawn for testing and a full history is taken.
•The attending calls for an Infectious Disease consult but suspects the worse.
•The patient has Ebola virus.
IF you were in charge of public health policy— what would you do? Who do you notify? What steps are necessary to save the most people? List your groups plans for preventing a pandemic of Ebola in on an island.
One Response
oconnor.brandon@
05 Mar 2010
Firstly this scenario is very far fetched, for him to get the ebola virus he would have had to be directly exposed to the blood of someone else infected, and that being the case he would have noticed the very high amount of people bleeding out. Also unless he was exposed to the virus the day he left it would have prevented symptoms before he left and would have been quarantined. Just for the sake of argument lets say he did make back to the states before symptoms started presenting themselves. The only people that would have been directly exposed to his bodily fluids would be his parents the doctor and maybe a nurse or two. Upon finding out that they were exposed to the virus they would be quarantined and the hospital would be closed down to make sure that on the off chance that others in the hospital did get infected it wouldn’t spread outside of the hospital. Also they would have probably given him a blood test before leaving Africa especially if he was in an area that was experiencing an out break of Ebola… so your scenario pretty much sucks.