Strident Ebola Insecurity

"Airborne transmission has not been ruled out and this is the fundamental disagreement that we're having with the government. We need to err on the side of safety."
Ontario Nurses' Association president Linda Haslam-Stroud

"It was the nurse in Texas that really rang the alarm bells for us."
"We will do our jobs 24/7 if we are well-protected, and we have the training. But we have to ramp up what we have on paper and ramp it up fast."
"My understanding is there are gaps. We are nurses for a reason. We know that you will be placed in some kind of danger, but the best option is to make sure you are well-trained and have proper personal equipment."
Linda Silas, head, Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions

"I think we passed the test in terms of the appropriate precautionary steps being taken, appropriate treatment being offered, lab tests being ordered in a rapid way. ... It was useful to see our planning that has been in place to now has really paid off."
Dr. Vera Etches, associate medical officer of health, Ottawa

A Doctors Without Borders (MSF), health worker in protective clothing carries a child suspected of having Ebola in the MSF treatment center on Oct. 5 in Paynesville, Liberia. The girl and her mother, showing symptoms of the deadly disease, were awaiting test results for the virus. The Ebola epidemic has killed more than 3,400 people in West Africa, according to the World Health Organization. (John Moore/Getty Images)

One Ottawa-area patient suspected of having the Ebola virus has been cleared. Clearance is awaited in yet another individual in Belleville. But the case of the nurse in Spain and the Texas nurse, both of whom acquired the virus from patients they were tending with Ebola, hangs heavy in the minds of Canadian nurses. The head of the organization representing 60,000 Ontario nurses expressed her fears that the province is not fully prepared.

Questions revolve around whether protective equipment should include special respirators to protect health workers from airborne particles. As well as some coverage offering more than simply gowns. Uncertainty about equipment and their protective capabilities stirs the fears of health care workers, particularly nurses across the country. Ms. Silas speaks of equipment problems she has heard of with some nurses complaining chins and necks were exposed, others that protective gowns had sleeves too short.

Equipment, she stressed, must be available at all facilities. The SARS epidemic, Ms. Haslam-Stroud reminded, infected dozens of health-care workers and death claimed three. That Canada is not yet fully prepared to cope with an epidemic in the country is a major concern to these nurses' representatives, particularly in light of the heavy death toll taken on health-care workers in the four West African countries most heavily impacted by Ebola.

And the World Health Organization warned that up to ten thousand new Ebola cases weekly could be surfacing in West Africa within the next several months. This, at the same time that it revealed the death rate in the present outbreak has risen, to 70 percent. Previous estimates given by the agency had given the Ebola mortality rate at around 50 percent. Contrast that to flu pandemics where the death rate typically is under two percent.

Ebola is considered a high-mortality disease, and the problem of isolating the ill, providing treatment as early as possible is being compounded by the increase in cases. Doctors Without Borders has said that 16 of its employees were infected with Ebola, nine of them having died. "Where is WHO Africa? Where is the African Union?" asked Sharon Ekambaram head of the South Africa unit of Doctors Without Borders. "We've all heard their promises in the media but have seen very little on the ground."

In Leipzig, Germany a 56-year-old medical worker with the United Nations infected in Liberia, died. Prompting Liberia's UN mission to place 41 other staff members under "close medical observation". In Dallas the American nurse who became Ebola-positive after treating a Liberian patient who then died, received a transfusion of plasma from Dr. Kent Brantly who received an experimental treatment to survive the virus.

The assistant nurse in Spain infected with Ebola has seen slight improvement while still in serious condition. Fifteen of her contacts were being monitored. And in the United States, over 200 people who shared a flight with another nurse from Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital who has now tested positive for Ebola are being sought for the purpose of isolating them until such time as their condition can be cleared.

The deadly spread appears inexorable... While withering the confidence of health-care workers to whom is entrusted the care of the infected.