Hospital In Zaire’s Capital Prepares Isolation Ward For Ebola Patients
With the threat of the deadly Ebola virus looming over the capital of 6 million, doctors and nurses created a hospital isolation ward Tuesday for the city’s first possible carriers.
Small green rooms with floral curtains were sectioned off at Kinshasa’s Ngaliema Hospital to hold a total of 20 people, and health workers in the isolation ward will have to stay there, too.
“This area will be quarantined for maximum, maximum, maximum protection,” said the hospital’s medical director, Dr. Maseb a Mwang Sulu.
Officials have been struggling to contain the virus to the region surrounding Kikwit, a city of 600,000 where the outbreak began in March, killing 86 people as of Tuesday.
The fear that Kinshasa, 370 miles west of Kikwit, was at risk became concrete Monday with reports that a riverboat captain and a nurse who had fled to the capital from Kikwit were suspected carriers.
A search for the two was launched and they were tracked down Tuesday.
The nurse worked at Kikwit General Hospital, where the epidemic began, and fled in panic to her family in Kinshasa, said Dr. Abdou Moudi, the World Health Organization’s representative in Zaire.
The captain was treated for bloody diarrhea at a Kinshasa hospital and released before doctors realized his symptoms were similar to those of Ebola.
Late Tuesday, Health Minister Lonyangela Bopenda Bo-nkuma said the captain had amoebic dysentery, not Ebola, and was released. He said he did not have any test results on the nurse, but that the case was still suspicious.
If she shows sign of Ebola, she will be quarantined for 28 days. Doctors will monitor her temperature for fever and check for antibodies to the virus.
“Why are they preparing the hospitals here just in case, even though they don’t have any cases now?” Bopenda Bo-nkuma asked. “While in a war, you have to prepare for the wounded.”
During Zaire’s first Ebola outbreak in 1976, Ngaliema Hospital treated two nuns and a nurse; all three died. President Mobutu Sese Seko posted soldiers around the hospital then with orders to let only doctors enter or leave.
On Tuesday, the hospital’s medical director said he was preparing isolation rooms for 15 to 20 people on Ward 5, which surrounds a beautifully tended garden.
“Even the doctors and nurses who work here will not be permitted to leave,” Sulu said.
“We don’t want people to be afraid that they will come into contact with the disease on the streets of Kinshasa,” said Dr. Membo Dongo, the assistant medical director.
A nurse who cared for two nuns dying of Ebola in 1976 said she would refuse to work in the quarantined ward.
“It was terrible,” recalled MarieJose Boteko Ilefo, 42. “Their faces, arms, legs were covered with a bright red rash. Their gums bled, they vomited blood and had diarrhea that was only blood and water.”
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Tuesday that it was having trouble getting medical supplies and equipment into Kikwit, and running into problems with communications there.
The CDC also said it was having difficulty getting samples from infected areas other than Kikwit.
Epidemiologists have found sick people in four more villages in the Kikwit region, and Ebola deaths have been confirmed in five places, including Kikwit, said Moudi, the WHO representative.
xxxx The virus There is no vaccine or cure for Ebola, which is spread through bodily fluids and kills 80 percent of those who contract it. Victims suffer from violent diarrhea and vomiting, and die within days with blood pouring from their eyes, ears and noses.