Texas City EMS, School Districts Prepared for Ebola

Oct. 13--It all starts with the question, "Have you traveled outside the country within the past 21 days?"

If you answer "yes" to this question in Lubbock right now, it could affect your medical care and whether or not your kids can attend Lubbock schools.

UMC EMS

Dr. Gerad Troutman, medical director for University Medical Center EMS and Lubbock Fire Rescue member, said first responders have been on alert preparing in case the virus ends up in West Texas.

"Essentially, what we're doing here is our first responders, all the pre-hospital leadership, right when the Ebola stuff started breaking, we started watching on state and national levels," he said.

The goal is to protect citizens and provide care while still protecting first responders, he said.

Dr. Steven Berk, dean of the Texas Tech Health Sciences Center School of Medicine, said people are at risk if they come into contact unprepared with somebody who has the virus.

"If you're touching their body or body fluids, vomit, diarrhea or blood, then that's going to lead to coming down with the virus. If you're not doing it with gowns and gloves, you're at high risk."

Guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control recommend first responders wear personal protective equipment including gowns, face masks and gloves, Troutman said.

UMC EMS officials are prepping to take those recommendations one step further, he said.

"We've increased that slightly to include an N95 mask ... and have crews place double gloves," Troutman said.

As an extra precaution, the inside of the ambulance for a suspected Ebola patient will also include a plastic liner to prevent any of the patient's body fluids getting into cracks and crevices in the vehicle, Troutman said.

"They're not a part of the ambulance every day," he said. "These would be for a high suspicion of an Ebola case."

Berk said symptoms of Ebola are unspecific.

"That's what's causing some of the confusion," he said. "The symptoms early on are fever, muscle aches, sore throat, often diarrhea and vomiting. Those are very nonspecific for lots of viral infections. In the late stages, there's lots of bleeding, a lot of skin rashes, organ system failure. In the later stages of the disease, it takes on a characteristic picture."

After exposure, the disease can take anywhere from three to 21 days to present, he said.

Schools

Lubbock schools are taking precautions with new students enrolling within their districts.

Micki Oates, student health coordinator for Lubbock Independent School District, said school officials are being cautious of who they let enroll.

"Whenever they walk in those doors with LISD, that registrar has their form," she said. "They ask, 'Have you lived or traveled outside the United States in the last 30 days?' If the parent says, 'Yes, we have,' then, 'From what country?' "

Oates said the next question before students can register is: "Have you come in contact with or provided care for someone with Ebola within the last 30 days?"

Lubbock-Cooper ISD is taking the same precautions, according to an emailed statement from the district's director of public information, Sadie Shaw.

"If the student has traveled outside of the United States within the 30 days prior to enrollment, or has recently been in direct contact with an individual who has traveled outside of the United States within the 30 days prior to enrollment, the campus nurse will take the student's temperature," the statement reads. "If the student presents with fever of at least 100 degrees Fahrenheit, the student will not be enrolled without clearance from a physician."

If the student's temperature is below 100, the statement reads, the guardians will be asked what country they've traveled from or what country the person the student came in contact with traveled from. If the country is located in West Africa and the student or traveler had contact with a sick person overseas, but the illness can't be identified, LCISD officials will ask the guardians to transport the child to a hospital for evaluation while LCISD notifies local health officials, according to the statement.

"The reason it's spreading so fast now is, first of all, the reservoir of Ebola is in the rain forest in West Africa," Berk said. "Most everybody is pretty sure now it's within the bats. They're colonized with Ebola. They live with Ebola without it causing them to die. Other animals eat the fruit bats. The fruit bats drop food on the forest floor, and then you have monkeys and animals eating that. People eat the animals infected with Ebola. The West African people even eat the fruit bats. That's how the disease spread to human beings."

The ability to isolate patients in West Africa is poor, Berk said.

The odds are better in America if it's caught in time, he said.

Both LISD and LCISD said they won't take any chances because the safety of students is a high priority.

Oates said, "We do our part by screening them before we let them go any further into the school. ... We stop them from the very beginning."

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