Canada: Ottawa readies Ebola response team; provinces designate treatment centers

Canada: Ottawa readies Ebola response team; provinces designate treatment centers. HT: Crof.

Via The Globe and Mail, Kelly Grant writes: Ottawa readies Ebola response team, provinces designate treatment centres. Excerpt:

Ottawa has a team of infectious disease experts on standby and the majority of Canadian provinces have designated specific Ebola treatment centres as this country tries to prepare for a killer virus that has now infected two U.S. nurses, raising serious questions about whether the average North American hospital can safely treat Ebola patients.  

Health Minister Rona Ambrose said Wednesday evening that if Ebola makes its way to Canada, the Public Health Agency of Canada would send a crew of epidemiologists and other experienced outbreak managers to help halt the spread of the virus, something the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now admits it should have done in a more robust manner after the first case of Ebola was diagnosed in Dallas last month. 

Meanwhile, every province from Alberta to Nova Scotia – with the exception of Ontario – has already selected two or more designated hospitals where health-care workers are supposed to receive extra training to treat possible Ebola patients. 

At least one British Columbia health authority has designated a hospital, and Ontario is in the process of choosing its designated hospitals now, according to the province’s Health Minister. 

The Canadian approach is an acknowledgment that not all hospitals can cope with Ebola patients, a reality underscored by the apparent bungling at the Dallas hospital that treated the first patient diagnosed with Ebola in the U.S. – Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian national who died of the disease. 

Ottawa has a team of infectious disease experts on standby and the majority of Canadian provinces have designated specific Ebola treatment centres as this country tries to prepare for a killer virus that has now infected two U.S. nurses, raising serious questions about whether the average North American hospital can safely treat Ebola patients.