EBOLA IN SPAIN

In September 2014, Teresa Romero, an assistant nurse in Madrid, Spain, was infected with the Ebola virus after caring for a Spanish missionary who had been sent home from Liberia with the disease. The missionary (and a second one) succumbed to the illness. Ms. Romero had apparently gone undiagnosed for days, despite that she had: 1) been treating two patients with Ebola, and 2) developed a fever.

Health officials suspect that she may have inadvertently touched her face with a gloved hand–a quick, thoughtless gesture that could have happened to anyone. It was that simple. Human error again plays a part.

The patient, Manuel García Viejo, who had been medical director of a Sierra Leone hospital for twelve years, passed away from Ebola on September 25, 2014. Another nurse who had aided in his care was tested several times and finally released from the hospital after all tests for Ebola came back negative. At the time of this writing, Ms. Romero is still hospitalized. Her dog was euthanized.

Madrid is not the Third World. How could this happen in a first‑world hospital? An investigation by the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control determined that despite the advancements the hospital had to offer, it lacked the proper capacity to handle emergencies such as an Ebola outbreak. The Health Ministry’s coordinator of emergency alerts, Fernando Simón, reported, “The airlocks were set up to deal with highly infectious situations, but what hadn’t been foreseen was a need for bulky outfits to perform certain medical procedures in.”

We’ll look at how to find out if your hospital is equipped to deal with an Ebola outbreak later in this book, but as you can see, even in the best, most secure hospitals, human error will always be an issue.