A nurse’s assistant in Spain — the first person to contract Ebola outside Africa — has taken a turn for the worse.
Dr. Yolanda Fuentes, who works at Madrid’s Carlos III hospital, said Thursday that Teresa Romero Ramos’ condition had worsened but declined to give further details.
Romero became sick after she helped treat an Ebola-stricken Spanish missionary. Her case has prompted questions from her fellow medical professionals about whether they are properly equipped to safely treat Ebola patients, and about why a week passed before she was treated.
The update on her condition comes 10 days after Romero first began feeling sick and three days after she called an ambulance to take her to a hospital.
Carlos III hospital indicated late Thursday that seven more people — a doctor, three nurses, two beauticians, a doctor and a hospital staffer — have been admitted for observation. This is in addition to seven others already in the hospital, though none of these besides Romero has tested positive for Ebola.
“The reason why we are seeing so many people admitted showing no symptoms is because the 80 people or so that are being monitored outside the hospital have been given the choice to do it at home or come into the hospital,” said a hospital spokeswoman, who is not named, as is customary in Spain.
In addition to concerns about Romero and these individuals’ health, the entire situation has raised serious questions about how the entire case was handled — from how the nurse’s assistant got the disease to how medical officials handled her care once she got sick.
Physician: My protection suit was too short
One of the physicians sounding the alarm — Dr. Juan Manuel Parra, who treated Romero at a different Madrid hospital earlier in the week — published an open letter Thursday indicating that his staff was ill-equipped to handle her.
Concerned about his exposure to Romero, Parra then checked himself into Carlos III. Parra was among five who the hospital said had no symptoms.
Parra says he cared for Romero on Monday at Madrid’s Alcorcon Hospital, where an ambulance had taken her that morning. He wrote that the sleeves on the protective suits available to him were too short, exposing parts of his arms.
In his letter, published Thursday by Spanish news outlets, Parra wrote that Romero was in an isolation room. He said he visited her 12 times in isolation from 8 a.m. to midnight, when she was transferred to Carlos III, which specializes in infectious diseases.
Her condition worsened throughout the day, and by the evening she had tested positive twice for Ebola, he wrote. But Parra said he learned of both positive results from media before hospital officials told him.
SOURCE: http://edition.cnn.com/2014/10/09/health/ebola-spain/index.html?iref=allsearch
