4 exposed to Ebola to be monitored on Nebraska Medical Center campus

Source: Omaha World Herald

By Jordan Pascale

Four American health care providers working in Sierra Leone who were exposed to the Ebola virus are coming to the Nebraska Medical Center for observation.

Taylor Wilson, medical center spokesman, said Saturday that the four may have come into contact with the patient who is in serious condition and being treated for Ebola at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.

The workers will be placed in quarantine on the medical center campus in a segregated area and will be monitored by the med center’s staff and officials from the Douglas County Health Department and the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services.

“These people have been exposed to the virus, but they aren’t sick and aren’t contagious,” said Dr. Phil Smith, medical director of the hospital’s biocontainment unit. “In the unlikely instance that one of them does develop symptoms, we would take them to the biocontainment unit immediately for evaluation and treatment. Because we have individuals to monitor simultaneously, the safest and most efficient way to do that is in a group setting.”

FULL story at link.



RYAN SODERLIN/THE WORLD-HERALD
A patient is rolled through a hallway at the Nebraska Medical Center.


Read more: http://www.livewellnebraska.com/ebola/exposed-to-ebola-virus-headed-to-nebraska-med-center-for/article_e99c647a-ca80-11e4-9bfe-e3b60ee2aa60.html