DALLAS — A Texas emergency room’s mishandling of the country’s first Ebola patient prompted the CDC to issue a nationwide alert to all hospitals updating them of how to appropriately respond to possible cases of the deadly disease.
“It’s a teachable moment, as we say,” Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said during a Thursday press conference.
The latest guidance includes a poster with quick rules for evaluating returned travelers and a checklist.
The move comes nearly a week after Thomas Eric Duncan showed up at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital with what officials described as fever and abdominal pain. Duncan, who had just moved to Dallas from West Africa, reportedly told hospital workers that he was recently in Liberia, one of the hardest hit areas of the deadly Ebola crisis.
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