Friday, October 03, 2014

JUST DON'T GET SICK OR INJURED IN PRISON

THE TROUBLE WITH THIS FUNNY
 IS IT AIN'T FUNNY


I wasn't in prison all that long (though long enough for me) and I only had to be treated once by the prison infirmary - for a head injury.  I saw some doctor who I had a feeling had been found drunk in a back ally somewhere before getting the job.  He didn't do much but he did stitch up my head (he was sorry that he couldn't provide a topical anesthetic).  Within days my head had turned yellow and I was constantly hitting the threads left dangling with my comb when I tried to get my hair in some order.  Despite the yellowing of my forehead, and the pain, and the dangling threads, I figured, I ain't going back to that doctor.  So with some help from a little contraband, some fellow convicts, and my own ingenuity (and tough guy attitude), I managed to survive and to fight on another day.  Ha....

So as I read the article posted below it made me a little ill.  Now, I am sure there are some doctors and nurses who go into prison healthcare with the idea that they can do some good.  I do believe that, but, I also believe even they can only fail.  The prison administration could care less about the health of those they are lording it over and they aren't about to waste time and money on a bunch of convicts.

It's the way it is.

Private prison (and/or privatized prison healthcare concerns) , of course, are even less likely to take the healthcare of a prisoner as a concern.  As long as that prisoner is filling a bed, and the money flows in, who cares what shape he or she is in.  If they die, hell, there is always another poor soul out there to take the place of the dead.

The first article is from the ACLU. The second is from the Palm Beach Post via Corrections One. There is nothing in it that should come as surprise in this episode of Scissions Cops and Jails friday.




Arizona Prisons’ Widespread Failings Detailed in Newly 
Released Reports
 Healthcare in Arizona Department of Corrections Facilities Does Not Meet Minimum Standards, Experts Find 

CONTACT: Steve Kilar, ACLU of Arizona, 602-773-6007, skilar@acluaz.org
PHOENIX – Nearly two dozen expert reports that detail widespread problems with the Arizona Department of Corrections’ healthcare system, as well as its use of solitary confinement, were made public late Monday. 
“I observed locked, dark and empty rooms that I was told were exam rooms, but lacked basic medical equipment,” wrote Dr. Robert Cohen, an expert in correctional medicine, in one of his reports (11/8/13 report, page 5). “Medical equipment was broken, covered in dust, and in some cases based on logs attached to them, had not been repaired or checked in more than a decade.” 
Dr. Cohen found that almost half of people who died “natural deaths” while in ADC’s care over a six-month period received “grossly deficient” medical care (2/24/14 report, pages 1-2). Every week, on average, a patient who has been neglected or mistreated dies in the Arizona prison system, according to these expert reports. 
“In some of these cases, the poor care clearly caused or hastened their death,” Dr. Cohen wrote (2/24/14 report, page 1-2). “It is alarming that almost half of the natural deaths occurring during the brief half year period under review would reveal such significant problems with delivery of basic medical services.” 
Dr. Cohen uncovered shocking delays in treatment including the case of a 38-year-old prisoner whose death from cancer was avoidable according to ADC’s own documents (2/24/14 report, pages 19-25). Another prisoner died of untreated lung cancer after being accused by nurses of lying about his medical condition; they said in his medical records that he was “playing games” and “seeking attention” (2/24/14 report, pages 25-32). A 24-year-old man died of AIDS-related pneumonia after his AIDS went undiagnosed and untreated for a year, despite his pleas for HIV tests and treatment, Dr. Cohen found (2/24/14 report, page 52). 
These are not isolated cases. Dr. Cohen’s findings, and the findings of the plaintiffs’ other experts, point to systemic deficiencies in ADC’s healthcare. 
“[T]here were multiple cases in which the lapses were so shocking and dangerous that I felt ethically obligated as a medical professional to bring them to the immediate attention of the ADC and Corizon staff,” Dr. Cohen said (11/8/13 report, page 4). Corizon is the company contracted by the state to provide healthcare to prisoners. 
The other experts made equally damning discoveries. The 23 expert reports, which were previously confidential, were made public yesterday pursuant to a court order in anticipation of an October trial relating to ADC’s failure to provide more than 33,000 prisoners in 10 prisons healthcare and conditions of confinement that meet constitutional standards. 
“[T]he chronic shortage of mental health staff, delays in providing or outright failure to provide mental health treatment, the gross inadequacies in the provision of psychiatric medications, and the other deficiencies identified in this report are statewide systemic problems, and prisoners who need mental health care have already experienced, and will experience, a serious risk of injury to their health if these problems are not addressed,” wrote Dr. Pablo Stewart, another expert hired by plaintiffs’ counsel to tour ADC’s prisons and review prisoners’ medical records, in one of his reports (11/8/13 report, page 10). 
Dr. Stewart, a psychiatry professor with expertise in prison mental health care, uncovered numerous preventable suicides by prisoners, lengthy and serious delays in care, insufficient and unlicensed staff and inadequate medication protocols. One prisoner hanged himself after ADC neglected to give him his prescribed mood stabilizing drugs for more than three weeks, Dr. Stewart found (11/8/13 report, pages 21-23). 
The reports also detail significant, dangerous problems with ADC’s use of solitary confinement. Some people, for instance, are put in isolation simply because other beds are full (Vail 11/8/13 report, page 9). Mentally ill prisoners are often isolated because ADC does not have treatment alternatives, according to one expert (Vail 11/9/13 report, page 13). 
“[T]he ADC health care delivery system is fundamentally broken and is among the worst prison health care systems I have encountered,” Dr. Cohen wrote (11/8/13 report, page 3). “[U]nless ADC dramatically reverses its course, it will continue to operate in a way that harms patients by denying them necessary care for serious medical conditions.” 
Plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit, Parsons v. Ryan, are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project, the ACLU of Arizona, the Prison Law Office, Jones Day, Perkins Coie LLP and the Arizona Center for Disability Law. 
A trial is scheduled to begin Oct. 21. More expert reports will be made public prior to the trial. 
The complete reports now available can be found here. Reporters can email the ACLU of Arizona to request report summaries.

--------------------------------------



Privatizing prison health care leaves inmates in pain, sometimes dying

Just months after all medical care in state prisons was privatized, the count of inmate deaths spiked to a 10-year high


By Pat Beall
The Palm Beach Post
PALM BEACH, Fla. — Inmates called her Red, for the thick auburn hair her beloved older sister once painstakingly curled.
Smart as a whip at 9, Donna Pickelsimer was troubled in her teens, struggling with alcohol in her 20s and, at 52 a convict, sentenced to 15 years behind bars.
Under the care of Florida’s newly privatized prison health system, she didn’t last four.
Handing off prison inmate medical care to for-profit companies was designed to deliver tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer savings beginning in 2012.
But for inmates, it has come with cold-blooded consequences, a Palm Beach Post investigation found.
Just months after all medical care in state prisons was privatized, the count of inmate deaths spiked to a 10-year high in January and continued at a record pace through July.
Doctors have expressed alarm. The number of seriously ill prisoners sent for outside hospital care is on track to drop by 47 percent from 2012, the last year for which the state handled medical care. Inmates say prescription painkillers are abruptly replaced with over-the-counter drugs such as ibuprofen.
Pickelsimer’s undiagnosed lung cancer was treated with Tylenol and warm compresses.
Serving time for manslaughter, “Donna did something wrong, and she went to prison to pay for what she did,” said Pickelsimer’s sister, Beverly Clancy. “But she was not sentenced to death.”
Following weeks of questions from The Post about inmate deaths, Florida’s Department of Corrections took action late Friday, warning prison health provider Corizon Inc. that its $1 billion contract was at risk if things didn’t improve.
“The level of care continues to fall below the contractually required standard,” wrote DOC Secretary Michael Crews. Problems, noted Crews, had begun almost as soon as Corizon took over inmate care for the vast majority of state prisoners.
“We are currently in the process of evaluating Secretary Crews’ concerns, and will work in a spirit of collaboration to address them,” said Corizon spokeswoman Susan Morgenstern. “Corizon works hard every day to deliver quality care to our patients,” she added. “We take that responsibility very seriously.”
Only dollars and cents
Forking over millions of dollars to pay for inmate health care never has been politically popular. And when Gov. Rick Scott, a former hospital conglomerate executive, campaigned in 2010 on saving tax dollars by turning over prison medical care to for-profit companies, lawmakers embraced the idea.
In 2012, the state inked inmate health care contracts totaling $1.3 billion with two companies: Wexford Health Sources for care at nine major prisons and Corizon Inc. for approximately 44. In addition, the companies care for inmates at prison annexes, work release centers and two centers for new inmates — roughly 100,000 prisoners in all.
Brenda V. Smith, a law professor at American University who has studied women’s health in prisons, doesn’t oppose privatization. But, she says: “There’s a sort of ignorance oftentimes at the policy level about what these changes mean. All they are looking at is dollars and cents.
“You have to be concerned about how you are getting these cheap rates.”
No state is under a legal obligation to provide inmates with excellent medical care.
They are, however, legally bound to provide adequate care by the U.S. Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
“I admit I was one of those saying, ‘Hey, they’re in prison, they can’t expect a lot,’ ” said Sandra Bustin, whose nephew was given over-the-counter painkillers such as Aleve for bone cancer. “But even basic care was missing.”
Bad numbers
In fact, inmate deaths are sharply up, according to state-supplied mortality data.
Data analyzed by The Post excluded deaths from homicides and accidents. Included are deaths from natural causes, such as disease and infection, as well as suicides and deaths in which the cause is listed by the state Department of Corrections as “pending.”
Suicide, a tiny portion of the deaths in all years, is considered a medical issue, as psychiatric care is part of the private companies’ health care contracts. The “pending” category, which occurs most frequently in 2014, is almost always determined to be a death from natural causes, 15 years of prisoner death records show.
Among the The Post’s findings:
In January, roughly 100 days after medical privatization was fully phased in, the monthly inmate death count shot to a 10-year high of 36.
Inmate deaths for the first seven months of this year totaled 206, also a 10-year high when compared with the first seven months of any other year and an 18.4 percent increase from the first seven months of 2012, when the state handled medical care.
When the state was in charge of all or most medical care, the monthly count of inmate deaths reached or topped 30 a total of 15 times in 10 years. That includes one year where the monthly death count hit 30 twice and topped 30 twice. This year, deaths topped 30 a total of four times in just seven months.
At the current rate of deaths, 2014 will have about 5 percent more deaths than the 313 recorded in 2012, the previous high.
Some deaths are expected: Age 50 is considered elderly among inmates, the result of little or no health care prior to prison.
“Many of our patients have not had access to health care before they see us and are already suffering from addiction, mental issues and chronic conditions such as diabetes and hypertension,” said Susan Morgenstern, a spokeswoman for Corizon. “We are not always able to restore them to full health again.”
Any number of factors can push mortality rates higher, such as an influx of older inmates, pointed out DOC spokeswoman Jessica Cary. And, said Cary, when DOC handled medical care in 2012, more inmates died than in 2013, when private companies gradually assumed care for all inmates.
“This is a snapshot in time,” she said of the 2014 numbers. “While we are continuing to monitor the number of deaths and their causes very closely, another year or more of information is needed to identify a trend.”
However, Crews’ Sept. 26 letter to Corizon makes clear the agency expressed concerns about shortcomings in medical care, nursing, mental health and administration fewer than 90 days into the company’s contract.
Repeated meetings have yet to fix the problems, Crews wrote, and now, the state is considering financial penalties. Payment will be withheld for each prison where Corizon fails to meet 80 percent of auditing standards. If a prison fails multiple audits, Corizon may have that facility cut from its contract.
Different suits, same complaints
Even as the state was quietly meeting with Corizon last year, inmates and doctors were voicing concerns.
Three private-practice doctors outside the Florida prison system agreed to speak with The Post anonymously. All expressed worry — and anger — with changes.
It wasn’t a perfect system when the state was in charge, said one, but now: “We order surgery and they don’t come in. They are dying before they get to surgery.”
At Memorial Hospital in Jacksonville, a once-busy ward designed to house more than two dozen prison inmates now holds as few as three or four a day, doctors say.
State numbers confirm the sharp dropoff: In the first eight months of this year, Corizon and Wexford sent just 1,009 inmates to outside hospitals. At that pace, the number of inmates referred to hospitals this year will plunge 47 percent from 2012, when DOC handled health care.
George Horn is among those waiting for surgery. The Columbia Correctional inmate was left with space where his right hip joint should be, according to his federal lawsuit. Horn’s artificial hip joint was surgically removed in early 2013, one of three surgeries needed to treat an infection. Wexford first approved, but later denied an operation to replace the bone, leaving Horn, who has six years left on an 11-year burglary sentence, without a hip joint.
Horn said he recently was told he would get another surgical consult, eleven months after the surgery was originally planned.
Tylenol for nerve pain
The Post reviewed more than 350 federal lawsuits brought by a Florida jail or prison inmate between 2004 and 2014 against Wexford or Corizon, as well as those filed against Corizon’s predecessors, Correctional Medical Services and Prison Health Services. Prison Health Services provided care at the Palm Beach County Jail from 2002 to 2004, but lost a bid for a new contract following reports of withheld psychiatric medicine, an outbreak of an infectious disease and inmate deaths which triggered lawsuits.
“In our litigious society, people file lawsuits for many reasons of their own,” said Corizon’s Morgenstern. “I can tell you that the majority of lawsuits filed against us are dismissed or resolved before they ever go to court.”
However, lawsuits alleging serious medical complaints tended to describe the same types of problems: fewer consults or treatment by outside specialists, Tylenol and ibuprofen prescribed for overwhelming pain and medication abruptly changed or withdrawn.
For instance, several Florida inmates previously prescribed Neurontin for pain say in court suits that they have been switched abruptly to over-the-counter painkillers such as Tylenol. Neurontin is a non-narcotic anti-seizure medication used to treat nerve pain.
A 60-year-old Florida inmate diagnosed with rheumatoid and osteoarthritis, bursitis, fibromyalgia, tendinitis, a dislocated shoulder and ruptured disks said he took Neurontin and another painkiller, Tramadol, for 10 years. Corizon’s prison medical director stopped the Tramadol and cut the Neurontin dosage in half, the inmate said. Acting as his own lawyer, he sued — not for money, but to get his medicine.
Separately, an inmate with a narrowing of spaces in the spine said state doctors prescribed Neurontin for three years to treat related nerve pain. “All that changed in November 2013,” he said, after Corizon began providing care. “I was told that the Aleve they gave me to replace the Neurontin I was on was the only thing I was going to get.”
When the inmate asked why, the doctor wrote first that the drug was no longer approved; when the inmate persisted, the physician changed the explanation, writing that the inmate no longer met criteriafor getting the drug.
Crutches, shoes
One blind prisoner who has trouble walking was prescribed orthopedic shoes in 2008, legal documents show. Such shoes can retail for as little as $99. DOC regularly filled his prescription beginning in 2009. This year, when it was time to replace the shoes, Corizon’s doctor refused, the inmate said in written grievances filed at the prison.
In another case, an inmate’s leg prosthesis was taken from him by state guards. The amputee was given crutches. Corizon authorized a new prosthesis— the inmate’s $10,000 device was lost — but in a federal suit, the inmate says five months lapsed before it was delivered. All the while, the muscle in what remained of his leg was withering.
When the inmate did get the device, it wasn’t fitted, said Randall Berg, executive director of the Florida Justice Institute, a legal advocacy group. As a result, “The stump became raw and infected and finally after some pressure from us they gave him antibiotics,” he said.
Federal law bars the state, Corizon and Wexford from discussing an inmate’s health.
However, DOC’s Cary point out that the state employs 17 monitors to watchdog medical care. “When there is a charge of inadequate care, each is personally reviewed and if care is found inappropriate we direct the provider to take corrective action,” she said.
In incidents involving Wexford, said spokeswoman Wendelyn Pekich, “We are confident we and our employees acted appropriately. For those instances still pending, we believe further investigation will demonstrate and prove the lack of any wrongdoing or negligence.”
Dramatic cuts
Determining whether medical care is appropriate and necessary is a key component of containing medical costs. And Corizon’s bid for Florida business emphasized the successes of its own cost containment strategies with a series of dramatic cuts: In Maine in 2011, Corizon said, “We have developed a new working definition of ‘medically necessary care,’” which cut visits to health care providers outside the prison by 30 percent.
In New Mexico, a new system of monitoring psychiatric drug prescriptions slashed monthly costs from $180,000 in 2007 to less than $30,000 in 2011, an estimated taxpayer savings of $2.1 million a year.
University of California Professor of Economics Kelly Bedard, who has researched inmate mortality, said that drops in prescriptions and hospital visits aren’t necessarily a sign companies are skimping.
“You can overtreat,” she said. For instance, the state may have over-prescribed psychiatric drugs. Fewer ER visits may mean a company is improving preventive care.
Fewer outside consults might mean that mobile X-ray and ultrasound services are being brought to the prison. “Making quality specialty and diagnostic services available within the prison facilities reduces the need for inmate patients to travel to community hospitals,” points out Wexford’s Pekich. That’s what Corizon did in Arkansas.
Seizing control
But Bedard’s research on 1990s-era mortality rates also found deaths rose slightly in prisons where care is provided by private companies, “and that leads to a whole host of questions.”
The same year Maine and Corizon redefined “medically necessary care,” a state-ordered review of the contract with Corizon found that about half of prescription records reviewed were missing information. State prison officials were concerned that prisoners were getting the wrong medications. Staff training was lacking.
In Idaho, where psychiatric drug use dropped by 13 percent in 2011 and prisons had one of the lowest rates of inmate hospitalization in the country, a 2012 report by a court-ordered monitor was so critical of Corizon’s care at one prison that the state sought to keep it sealed.
The cost of not getting health care right can wipe out taxpayer savings: States are usually sued right along with the health care companies, and inmate lawsuits rack up a state’s legal defense bills.
Equally problematic is that federal judges overseeing class-action cases can seize oversight from the state and dictate details of care. That’s what happened in Florida in 1972, when a prisoner’s handwritten lawsuit prompted federal judges to oversee Florida inmate health care for the next two decades.
The substandard health care at the heart of that case was provided by the state, not private companies. However, William Sheppard, a Jacksonville attorney who represented the inmates, said that about eight of every 10 inmate letters to his law firm allege substandard medical services under the privatized system.
Sheppard doesn’t doubt the companies are saving the state money. But, he says, cases like Pickelsimer’s exact another price: “How much does it cost your soul to watch these people die?”
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
Staff writer Kavya Sukumar contributed to this story.

Thursday, October 02, 2014

NURSES PROTEST: SAY USA NOT PREPARED FOR EBOLA

Death sounds his gong to symbolize the toll taken by Ebola
Nurses Drop to the pavment to symbolize deaths of health workers to Ebola
Protesters in hazmat suits
chalk outlines and the hashtag #stopebolarnrn



Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/09/24/6731509/nurses-to-march-on-vegas-strip.html#storylink=cpy
                            NURSES' PROTEST SAYS US HOSPITALS ARE NOT PREPARED FOR EBOLA 



The CDC says we will stop Ebola in its tracks.  The USA is prepared, they say.  We have this fabulous, modern healthcare system, they say.  It can't happen here, they say.

Really?

I won't even begin to get into the nonsense about our fabulous healthcare system all that much.  I mean, we don't even have a system, let alone a fabulous one.  We have a whole lot of great technology and we have a whole lot of great healthcare workers, but a system, I don't think so.  A system would imply something that can take care of all our citizens.  Does anyone believe that describes our "system?"  We have a mess of private, not for profit, governmental, insurance company, big pharmacy, conglomeration.  That's what we've got.  You know that.  I know that. We all know that.

Don't get me wrong, again our healthcare workers and our technology and knowledge could be a fabulous healthcare system.  Capital just won't allow it to be.

Okay, enough of that.

Are we prepared for a real epidemic of something like Ebola or H5N1 flu?

A whole lot of nurses are saying they don't think so.  Just last week a thousand nurses at a convention in Las Vegas staged protest rally and a die in to highlight what they said was, the lack of training, equipment and isolation rooms where suspected Ebola-infected patients in the US could be quarantined.   The nurses wore hazmat suits and red shirts during the protest and also observed a moment of silence for international health workers who have died while trying to care for Ebola patients in West Africa.

Ebola "can easily come to our shores, and we're not ready," said Julia Scott, a registered nurse from Largo Medical Center in Florida who was attending the rally.

The nurses were responding in part to the comments of a top federal health official who told a Senate committee last week that Ebola could come to the USA...which it now has.

Despite the nurses' concerns, Roslyne Schulman, policy director for the American Hospital Association, said members are prepared to "handle a broad range of infectious diseases" and have been encouraged to follow the federal Centers for Disease Control's recommendations for how to respond to the Ebola virus.
"When there is a potential risk for particular infections in communities — such as Ebola — hospitals alert their clinical staff to increase surveillance for symptoms and risk factors associated with the specific disease," she said in an emailed statement.
Fat lot of good that did when a Dallas healthcare team at one of those large, modern hospital either failed to get or failed to read a report prepared by an ER nurse which documented that the patient now confined there with Ebola had just come from Liberia.  As you know, the hospital sent the fellow home with some antibiotics.  Kind of confirms that feeling I think we all have that all those health history forms and the like we fill out constantly when we visit our healthcare provider are never actually read by the doctor who sees us.  
Mistakes happen, but this one should not have happened now, and as I indicate above, I don't view it so much as a mistake but rather as routine.
Several weeks ago, National Nurses United began surveying registered nurses across the U.S. about emergency preparedness.  In preliminary results from more than 400 RNs in more than two dozen states:
  • More than 60 percent of RNs say their hospital is not prepared for the Ebola virus.
  • 80 percent say their hospital has not communicated to them any policy regarding potential admission of patients infected by Ebola
  • 85 percent say their hospital has not provided education on Ebola
  • 30 percent say their hospital has insufficient supplies of eye protection (face shields or side shields with goggles) and fluid resistant gowns
  • 65 percent say their hospital fails to reduce the number of patients they must care for to accommodate caring for an “isolation” patient


 A recent report from the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General warned the U.S. is ill-equipped to handle a major pandemic, despite the federal government allocating at least $47 million to prepare for it since 2006. 

Here is something you have heard nothing about.  What happens to infectious waste generated in the USA by an Ebola patient.  Well,  Reuters reports that:

Waste management companies are refusing to haul away the soiled sheets and virus-spattered protective gear associated with treating the disease, citing federal guidelines that require Ebola-related waste to be handled in special packaging by people with hazardous materials training...


Claims Journal goes further,  

 Many U.S. hospitals are unaware of the regulatory snafu, which experts say could threaten their ability to treat any person who develops Ebola in the U.S. after coming from an infected region. It can take as long as 21 days to develop Ebola symptoms after exposure.

The issue created problems for Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, the first institution to care for Ebola patients here. As Emory was treating two U.S. missionaries who were evacuated from West Africa in August, their waste hauler, Stericycle, initially refused to handle it. Stericycle declined comment.

Ebola symptoms can include copious amounts of vomiting and diarrhea, and nurses and doctors at Emory donned full hazmat suits to protect themselves. Bags of waste quickly began to pile up.

“At its peak, we were up to 40 bags a day of medical waste, which took a huge tax on our waste management system,” Emory’s Dr. Aneesh Mehta told colleagues at a medical meeting earlier this month.

Emory sent staff to Home Depot to buy as many 32-gallon rubber waste containers with lids that they could get their hands on. Emory kept the waste in a special containment area for six days until its Atlanta neighbor, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, helped broker an agreement with Stericycle.

The CDC has issued detailed guidelines on how hospitals can care for such patients, but their recommendations for handling Ebola waste differs from the U.S. Department of Transportation, which regulates the transportation of infectious waste.

CDC advises hospitals to place Ebola-infected items in leak-proof containers and discard them as they would other biohazards that fall into the category of “regulated medical waste.”

According to DOT guidelines, items in this category can’t be in a form that can cause human harm. The DOT classifies Ebola as a Category A agent, or one that is potentially life-threatening.

DOT regulations say transporting Category A items requires special packaging and hazmat training.

CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said the agency isn’t aware of any packaging that is approved for handling Ebola waste.

As a result, conventional waste management contractors believe they can’t legally haul Ebola waste, said Thomas Metzger, communication director for the National Waste & Recycling Association trade group.


Part of Emory’s solution was to bring in one of the university’s large-capacity sterilizers called an autoclave, which uses pressurized steam to neutralize infectious agents, before handing the waste off to its disposal contractor for incineration.

Few hospitals have the ability to autoclave medical waste from Ebola patients on site.

“For this reason, it would be very difficult for a hospital to agree to care for Ebola cases – this desperately needs a fix,” said Dr Jeffrey Duchin, chair of the Infectious Diseases Society of America’s Public Health Committee.

Dr. Gavin Macgregor-Skinner, an expert on public health preparedness at Pennsylvania State University, said there’s “no way in the world” that U.S. hospitals are ready to treat patients with highly infectious diseases like Ebola.

“Where they come undone every time is the management of their liquid and solid waste,” said Macgregor-Skinner, who recently trained healthcare workers in Nigeria on behalf of the Elizabeth R. Griffin Research Foundation.


Skinner said the CDC is working with DOT to resolve the issue. He said the CDC views its disposal guidelines as appropriate, and that they have been proven to prevent infection in the handling of waste from HIV, hepatitis, and tuberculosis patients.

Joe Delcambre, a spokesman for DOT’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, could not say whether requiring hospitals to first sterilize Ebola waste would resolve the issue for waste haulers. He did confirm that DOT is meeting with CDC. 
At the Las Vegas rally RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of National Nurses United  said that the time for a dramatic response to this stuff is now.

“This potential exposure of patients and healthcare workers demonstrates the critical need for planning, preparedness and protection at the highest level in hospitals throughout the nation," said Bonnie Castillo, RN, director of NNU’s Registered Nurse Response Network, which is coordinating the RN response.

“The clock is ticking. It is long past time to act,” Castillo said. Preparedness for disease outbreaks is a long standing problem, note the nurses, citing the death of a U.S. nurse in a California hospital infected during the H1N1 outbreak in 2009.

NNU is calling for:
  • All U.S. hospitals to immediately implement a full emergency preparedness plan for Ebola, or other disease outbreaks. That includes full training of hospital personnel along with proper protocols and training materials for responding to outbreaks, adequate supplies of all personal protective equipment, properly equipped isolation rooms to assure patient, visitor and staff safety, and sufficient staffing to supplement nurses and other health workers who need to care for patients in isolation.
  • Significant increases in provision of aid, financial, personnel, and protective equipment, from the U.S., other governments, and private corporate interests to the nations in West Africa directly affected to contain and stop the spread of Ebola.
  • Proper funding of international disaster relief and global health agencies whose budgets have been cut as a result of austerity measures implemented by the wealthiest nations.
  • Stepped up action on the climate crisis which has contributed to the spread of disease outbreaks. Scientific American in 2008 named Ebola, which is directly affected by drought-related deforestation, as one of a dozen epidemics likely to be spurred by climate change.
Meanwhile least we forget,  the total number of probable, confirmed and suspected cases in the current West Africa Ebola Virus Disease(EVD) outbreak as of 28 September 2014 is 7,178, with 3,338 deaths according to the health ministries of Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, Senegal and Sierra Leone.


The World Health Organization (WHO) says the upward epidemic trend continues in Sierra Leone and most probably also in Liberia. By contrast, the situation in Guinea appears to be more stable, though it must be emphasized that in the context of an outbreak of EVD, a stable pattern of transmission is still of grave concern, and could change quickly.This is a leap from 6553 (probable, confirmed and suspected) cases and 3083 deaths reported as of Sept. 23.

Responding to the growing numbers of reported cases (and the certainty that there are exponentially more unreported cases) of persons sick and dying of Ebola in West Africa, NNU's DeMoro said  simply, "It's not acceptable that these people are dying." 

No, it is not and,  as I have written previously in several earlier posts here, while the virus is the direct cause of these deaths it is global capital, healthcare inequality, poverty, and racism which is the true culprit in this and related epidemics. 

NOTE: There is one other thing I have to say which troubles me.  Everyone is relying a whole lot on self reporting and self quarantining, and the like.  I think experience (including my own history of work in community health) says, "that's a nice thought," but certainly cannot always be counted upon.  

The following is a press release from National Nurses United.



Nurses Call on U.S. Hospitals to Improve Emergency Preparedness for Potential Ebola U.S. Infections

National Nurses United Press Release, 10/2/14
Following reports that a Dallas hospital failed to hospitalize a patient infected with the Ebola virus and failed to properly communicate essential information to caregivers about his health status, National Nurses United is stepping up the call on U.S. hospitals to immediately upgrade emergency preparations for Ebola in the U.S.
“At a rally of 1,000 nurses last week in Las Vegas, we warned that it was just a matter of time in an interconnected world that we would see Ebola in the U.S. Now, everyone should recognize that Texas is not an island either, and as we’ve heard from nurses across the U.S., hospitals here are not ready to confront this deadly disease,” said NNU executive director RoseAnn DeMoro.
As one step, NNU members from the California Nurses Association Wednesday met with officials of Kaiser Permanente, the largest hospital chain in California, proposing Kaiser immediately upgrade its pandemic disease preparedness, including planning, communications, hands on training and availability of proper protective equipment, including Hazmat suits, the most effective protective gear.
Kaiser said that Hazmat suits are not needed, even though nurses, doctors and other health workers have been infected and died in what the World Health Organization calls “unprecedented” numbers in West Africa.
Kaiser also insists its hospitals are prepared, despite an experience at a Kaiser hospital in Sacramento in August demonstrating the scope of the problem when a patient who it was feared had been exposed to Ebola came to the hospital.
No information was given to staff until after the potential exposure was reported by local media, even though the patient had already been in the hospital for two days and had come in contact with many RNs and other staff. Outraged RNs then marched on hospital officials protesting the mishandling of the situation and demanding proper education, training, and equipment for frontline nurses.
The Sacramento example, and Kaiser’s response this week “is very alarming to frontline nurses,” said CNA co-president Zenei Cortez, a Kaiser RN. “Whatever Kaiser is doing, their plans have never included any frontline nurses who would be the first ones to come into contact with patients exposed to any pandemic disease. It shows a total disregard for protecting patients, staff, and the wider public,” said Cortez.
Preliminary results of an NNU survey released this week showed Kaiser is hardly unique. The survey of hundreds of nurses in more than 200 hospitals in 25 states has found that more than 60 percent say their hospital is not prepared for the Ebola virus. More than 80 percent say their hospital has not communicated to them any policy regarding potential admission of patients infected by Ebola. Another 30 percent say their hospital has insufficient supplies of eye protection and fluid resistant gowns.
The Dallas case, where the infected patient was sent home after arriving at the hospital, hardly provides any reassurance, said NNU today.
Media reports have indicated that the Dallas patient’s exposure was not properly communicated to hospital staff. Hospital officials reportedly told the media they had done one drill, “but nurses and other hospital staff work around the clock. One drill is hardly sufficient,” said Bonnie Castillo, RN, director of NNU’s Registered Nurse Response Network which is coordinating NNU’s Ebola response.
NNU is calling for all U.S. hospitals to immediately implement a full emergency preparedness plan for Ebola, or other disease outbreaks. That includes:
  • Full training of hospital personnel along with proper protocols and training materials for responding to outbreaks,
  • Adequate supplies of Hazmat suits and other personal protective equipment
  • Properly equipped isolation rooms to assure patient, visitor and staff safety,
  • Sufficient staffing to supplement nurses and other health workers who need to care for patients in isolation.
NNU is also calling for significant increases in provision of aid, financial, personnel, and protective equipment, from the U.S., other governments, and private corporate interests to the nations in West Africa directly affected to contain and stop the spread of Ebola.