I've looked over the Ebola safety protocol for health care workers and was a little shocked.
Anyone who might be working with treating a patient in the future might try putting some gloves on at home, dipping them within a centimeter of their edge in paint, and trying to remove them without getting a single speck of paint on their skin using any protocol - not easy to do.
Comparing the health care protocol with the level 4 biohazard safety protocol for lab techs working with Ebola http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosafety_level#Biosafety_level_4 shows rather large gaps. To be fair, it would obviously be impractical to construct level 4 containment facilities in all hospitals by tomorrow. It would be reasonably easy, on the other hand, to start implementing some of the level 4 standards. Starting with:
- Positive pressure safety suits with a segregated air supply for health care workers
- UV light treatment, vacuuming, and showering in disinfectant solutions before suits are removed. (This would be analogous to washing paint off a glove that went all the way up your arm before removing it - not a speck of paint would hit your skin.)
Has anyone discussed something like this with hospital management? Are your suits on their way? If I were a nurse I'd get my own level 4 PPE and tell the staff they either let me use it or "I'm not going in there" as a form of self preservation, determination to win a war with a case of the disease, and extremely reasonable civil disobedience.
