Risk Ebola will reach Canada increases the longer the outbreak persists: Study

[herring_RN, ASN, BSN]

Every month, three people infected with Ebola are likely to board a plane out of West Africa and take the lethal virus somewhere else in the world, according to a new Canadian-led study...

... The study comes as Canadian nursing leaders raised fresh alarms Monday over draft Ebola guidelines prepared by the Public Health Agency of Canada.

The Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions says the guidelines fall far short of those issued by Ontario's Health Minister last week, that they disregard concerns about the possible potential for aerosol transmission of the virus and fail to mandate a minimum nurse staffing ratio of two nurses for every Ebola infected patient.

"We urge (the federal health agency) to go with the precautionary principle: when you're not sure, you protect," said federation president Linda Silas.

"We made it clear that the Ontario directives should be the minimum of what the country is looking at, and that we will accept nothing less."

Nurses need to be properly protected, whether they're at the triage desk in an emergency room or an intensive care unit, she said.

That includes N95 face masks, "the best mask out there, and if patients are sick then it's the full suit, the Hazmat suits you see on TV."...

... People visibly sick with Ebola are unlikely to board a plane. "So traveller screening, whether it's exit screening or entry screening, isn't likely to have a big impact in terms of mitigating the spread of this disease," Khan said.

"This is the type of outbreak where many might feel compelled to try and close down their borders and lock the disease out. That's really almost impossible," he said. "Source control is the real priority right now-decreasing the number of new infections in the three countries themselves."

http://www.canada.com/health/Risk+Ebola+will+reach+Canada+increases+longer+outbreak+persists+Study/10308663/story.html