Originally published October 24 2014
Dallas hospital apologizes for Ebola mistakes in full-page newspaper ad
by Jonathan Benson, staff writer
(NaturalNews) Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas says it is "deeply sorry" for how its staff bungled the handling of Ebola, which left one patient dead and at least two nurses infected with the virus. In a recent full-page letter published in the local newspaper, the hospital's CEO apologized for the facility's "mistakes" in a desperate attempt to get people to use the hospital again.
Since Texas Health Presbyterian made national news, few have been willing to use the facility for emergency care or even outpatient services. What used to be a nearly one-hour wait time in the emergency room has dropped to no wait time at all, as members of the community choose other care facilities with less risk of Ebola transmission.
According to Dr. Dan Varga, chief clinical officer of Texas Health Resources, which owns the hospital, the primary goal is to reinvent the image of Texas Health Presbyterian in order to convince people that it's still a safe place to receive care. At the current time, most people seem to be avoiding it like the plague, and for good reason.
"I would tell this community that Presby is an absolutely safe hospital to come to," he stated to ABC News. "We've been in communication with our doctors that have their private offices in our professional buildings around the campus who are getting 40, 50, 60 percent cancellations just for fear of being somewhere in the geography of the hospital where Ebola is treated."
Texas Health says it didn't know Duncan came from Africa
In the apology letter, Texas Health makes the claim that Thomas Eric Duncan's travels to West Africa had not been "communicated effectively among the care team, though it was in his medical chart." The hospital also admits that it didn't properly diagnose his symptoms as being indicators of a possible Ebola infection.
Despite the flowery language, these statements affirm what several nurses from the hospital claimed in the days after it was discovered that nurses Nina Pham and Amber Vinson had contracted the virus. In essence, there were no protocols whatsoever for how to properly handle Ebola at Texas Health Presbyterian, and "patient zero" was not kept in appropriate isolation due to misdirection from hospital management.
"Mr. Duncan was left for several hours not in isolation, in an area with other patients," stated the National Nurses Union, which is now representing Texas Health nurses. "Subsequently, a nurse supervisor arrived and demanded that he be moved to an isolation unit, yet faced resistance from other hospital authorities."
Saying "sorry" won't stop Ebola spread
Texas Health had to have known about the Ebola outbreak for at least several months prior to its arrival on the hospital's doorstep in late September. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had issued several warnings about it in months prior, and the topic had begun to dominate the airwaves and print news around the same time.
Claiming that basic preparedness efforts had "not been fully deployed" when Duncan showed up for treatment isn't a valid excuse, and merely saying "sorry" for this major blunder doesn't really help the now-dead man or his family. It also doesn't help eradicate the disease from the now-infected nurses, who were among those shorted when it came to receiving proper protective gear.
"It's not even a stretch to guess that most of you probably have more due diligence with basic cleanliness in your own homes than this hospital -- which gets paid large sums to care for sick and hurt people -- did," wrote Melissa Melton for The Daily Sheeple.
Learn all these details and more at the FREE online Pandemic Preparedness course at www.BioDefense.com
Sources:
http://www.thedailysheeple.com
http://www.thedailysheeple.com
http://abcnews.go.com
http://science.naturalnews.com
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