KANSAS CITY, Kan. – Monday afternoon President Barack Obama announced that additional passenger screenings at airports are being added to help stop the spread of Ebola.
Here in the metro, a spokesperson for the Missouri Health Department says the patient at Research Medical Center suspected of possibly having Ebola does not have the virus. The hospital says it became clear quickly that he did not have Ebola, because hospital staffs are trained to ask certain questions to try and identify the virus.
Area hospitals are going through extensive training about how to deal with potential Ebola patients. Medical professionals at the University of Kansas Hospital showed FOX 4 what they do in that case.
The man at Research Medical Center may be the only case we have heard about, but he is not the only person locally suspected of having Ebola. There was a patient who exhibited symptoms and had recently traveled to West Africa, but was determined to have Malaria.
He went through the protocol that all patients who show symptoms do. When a patient walks into the emergency room and has symptoms like high fever, vomiting, and they have recently been to West Africa, they are immediately taken into isolation.
The medical staff suits up in impermeable gowns, booties to the knees, longer than normal gloves, a mask and face shield. The patient is kept in a room with another room outside, it’s called a negative airflow room which is pressurized so the air does not get into the hallway.
Ebola is passed through close contact with bodily fluid only after the person starts feeling symptoms, so it is not so much the public, but the healthcare workers who are really at risk of contracting the virus.
