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SHE’S FREE BUT IN SPAIN, WAS IT MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING?
TERESA ROMERO, and all those that have fought to save her life and care for her and nurse her back to a normal state of health in the Carlos III Hospital, Madrid really are the pride of their country. The delight was palpable when the announcement was made on Sunday evening that following 14 days of treatment to the first person to have contracted the deadly Ebola virus, a blood test returned negative for the condition. Despite this and even if cleared in a further round of testing, Romero will remain in hospital for three more weeks to ensure there is no recurrence of the virus, according to Spain's El Pais newspaper. Only then will she considered cured.
The Spanish government also said in its statement on Sunday that two other people — one who had complained of Ebola-like symptoms and a person who had "low-risk" contact with Romero — had tested negative in a second round of tests. The world, and naturally here in Spain, has been following the welfare on a daily basis of the nurse whose own fate has gone from critical, to serious, to recovering slowly, progressing well, to almost cured. The function of her liver, kidneys and lungs have recovered to the extent that she’s on solid foods, hardly needs her oxygen mask, walking around her room and just wants to leave hospital. She’s reported as being very lucid but doesn’t remember anything about how she probably contracted Ebola in the first place by touching her face with an infected glove. At the same time 15 people remain in the Carlos III Hospital under observation for having contact with Teresa and so far have not shown symptoms. More encouraging news continues as the missionary that arrived in Madrid from Monrovia in Liberia 10 days ago has been released from hospital following a series of tests returning negative. He belongs to the same order – San Juan de Dios – as Spanish priests Miguel Pajares
and Manuel García Viejo, who contracted Ebola while treating infected patients in West Africa. The pair were later repatriated by the Spanish government and died while in care at Carlos III Hospital. Teresa Romero was on the team that took care of the missionaries. The Nigerian citizen that was taken from an aeroplane recently arrived from Paris at Madrid’s Barajas Airport and suspected of having the Ebola virus having showed fever symptoms was discovered to have contracted malaria. Politicians and health officials have taken their fair share of blame over the past three weeks. Health Minister Ana Mato still faces calls for her resignation after a particularly disastrous performance at a press conference. Despite all the good news coming out of Madrid and no known new cases being discovered on Spanish soil, The Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, said on Friday that he does not doubt that the Spanish society will win the battle against the Ebola virus and has defended the government’s decision to repatriate the deceased missionaries Miguel Pajares and Manuel Garcia Viejo that brought the virus into Spain in the first place. The scare has done damage to Spain, to their stock market and to their standing in the world. The share prices of several tourism and travel companies listed on stock exchanges in Madrid and London fell sharply on fears for Spanish tourism following the confirmation in Spain of the first Ebola transmission case outside of Africa. IAG, the group that owns British Airways, Iberia and Vueling, dropped 4.64% on Madrid’s IBEX 35 exchange and …4.74% on the London Stock Exchange. Low cost airlines, which bring millions of foreign tourists to Spain’s coastal resorts each year, were also hit. EasyJet was down 4.84% and Ryanair was down 3.48% in London. Spanish hotel groups didn’t escape the panic that followed the news either. NH Hoteles fell by 4.09% and Meliá by 3.02%, and in London tour operators Thomas Cook Group and TUI Travel fell by 3.00% and 2.04% respectively. So what happened in Spain at the Carlos III Hospital in Madrid that set off this chain of events? The woman was part of a medical team at Madrid's La Paz-Carlos III hospital that treated two elderly Spanish missionaries who died of Ebola shortly after they were repatriated to Spain from Africa in August and September. She began to feel ill on September 30 but did not go to hospital until Sunday October 5th complaining of a fever. Health authorities are trying to track down all the people she may have come in contact with since she became infected with Ebola, and one of the first to also be isolated was her husband – she has no children – but in a sad outcome to this story, her pet dog Excalibur was destroyed by the authorities despite a public campaign to prevent it. But just how dangerous is Ebola to the average human being on the street and living in Spain, and in other developed countries such as the UK and the USA? According to guidance issued by the World Health Organisation (WHO), the facts and figures show you have to be very unlucky or exceptionally ignorant to contract the virus. Infection only occurs from DIRECT CONTACT through broken skin or mucous membranes with the blood, or other bodily fluids or secretions (stool, urine, saliva, semen, vomit) of infected people. Infection can also occur if broken skin or mucous membranes of a healthy person come into contact with environments that have become contaminated with an Ebola patient’s infectious fluids such as soiled clothing, bed linen, or used needles. More than 100 health-care workers have been exposed to the virus while caring for Ebola patients. This happens because they may not have been wearing personal protection equipment or were
Your Essential Weekly Read Tuesday, October 21st 2014 - Edition 554
REMEMBER TO PUT YOUR CLOCKS BACK 1 HOUR AT 2AM SUNDAY MORNING
not properly applying infection prevention and control measures when caring for the patients. Ebola is not an airborne virus which can be caught like a cold. It’s more like AIDS in the sense that you ONLY contract the illness if you come into DIRECT CONTACT with a sufferer. Keep that in mind at all times. Additional transmission of the virus has occurred in communities during funerals and burial rituals. Burial ceremonies in which mourners have direct contact with the body of the deceased person have played a role in the transmission of Ebola. Persons who have died of Ebola must be handled using strong protective clothing and gloves and must be buried immediately. WHO advises that the deceased be handled and buried by trained case management professionals, who are equipped to properly bury the dead. People are infectious as long as their blood and secretions contain the virus. For this reason, infected patients receive close monitoring from medical professionals and receive laboratory tests to ensure the virus is no longer circulating in their systems before they return home. This is the exact procedure that’s been followed by the Madrid hospital where Teresa Romero has been confined. Many are starting to question the panic surrounding Ebola. One minute it’s “we’re all going to die”; the next minute the story’s gone. The President of the United States, Barack Obama, spent most of his weekly radio address on the subject.... This is a serious disease, but we can't give in to hysteria or fear-because that only makes it harder to get people the accurate information they need. We have to be guided by the science. We have to remember the basic facts. First, what we're seeing now is not an "outbreak" or an "epidemic" of Ebola in America. We're a nation of more than 300 million people. To date, we've seen three cases of Ebola diagnosed here-the man who contracted the disease in Liberia, came here and sadly died; the two courageous nurses who were infected while they were treating him. Our thoughts and our prayers are with them, and we're doing everything we can to give them the best care possible. Now, even one infection is too many. At the same time, we have to keep this in perspective. As our public health experts point Continued on page 2