Texas Hospital Apologizing for Mishandling of Ebola Case
Thursday, October 16, 2014 at 6:49AM The operator of the Texan hospital in which two nurses contracted Ebolahas apologised for initially failing to diagnose the patient who infected them, and for misinforming the public about how this happened.
Dr Daniel Varga, chief clinical officer at Texas Health Resources, conceded that errors were made by Presbyterian hospital in Dallas, which sent Thomas Eric Duncan home after he complained of a fever and abdominal pain after arriving from his native Liberia last month.
“Unfortunately, in our initial treatment of Mr Duncan, despite our best intentions and highly skilled medical team, we made mistakes,” Varga wrote in testimony to the US Congress. “We did not correctly diagnose his symptoms as those of Ebola. We are deeply sorry”.
Duncan died on 8 October, a week after he became the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the US, and two weeks since he first sought treatment at the hospital’s emergency room. Two nurses involved in his care Nina Pham, 26, and Amber Vinson, 29 – have since been diagnosed with the virus, raising serious questions about the hospital’s procedures.
Texas Health initially explained its failure to diagnose Duncan, who did not have health insurance, by saying that a nurse had not shared the patient’s travel records with a doctor. However, it has subsequently retracted this statement.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had advised hospitals to consider Ebola when diagnosing people suffering from a fever after travelling to countries affected by the outbreak.
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