Kasich, CDC to discuss Ebola in Akron visit

October 18, 2014 at 12:10a.m.

Staff report

Gov. John Kasich and elected and health officials will meet with representatives from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention today to get an update on the status of Ohio’s Ebola response.

The meeting will be at the Summit County Health Department in Akron.

Amber Joy Vinson, a 29-year-old nurse who had treated the Liberian man who died of the disease in a Dallas hospital, visited family in the Akron area last week then flew back to Texas from Cleveland on Monday. She was diagnosed with Ebola the next day.

A tabletop exercise hosted by St. Elizabeth Health Center in Youngstown on Friday helped hospital personnel, government officials, public health representatives and other front-line organizations learn their roles should a patient with Ebola symptoms walk into the emergency room.

Some 40 people attended the exercise in person and 25 others remotely at St. Joseph in Warren and St. Elizabeth Boardman.

The lead presenters were Patty Melnykovich, HMHP safety officer, and Patricia Patterson, HMHP infection prevention and control director.

Part of the exercise was a pretend scenario in which a military member who was stationed in Liberia and had just returned home two weeks ago walked into the emergency room seeking treatment.

That triggered the hospital’s Ebola-screening protocol, said Don Koenig, executive vice president and chief operating officer for Humility of Mary Health Partners.

The protocol includes asking the patient if he has traveled to one of the three West African nations in which the Ebola outbreak is centered — Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone — within the past 21 days.

“The first thing we look for is an elevated temperature and ask the patient if they have been in close contact with anyone who has been diagnosed with Ebola and is being monitored or quarantined for Ebola,” Koenig said.

If the patient’s answers are affirmative, hospital personnel suit up with personal protective equipment, quarantine the patient in the hospital’s negative-pressure room, and call the Mahoning County Health Department for instructions, Koenig said.

The county health department is the liaison between health care providers and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, he said.

Koenig said HMHP has placed personal protective equipment in the emergency rooms at St. Elizabeth and St. Joseph Health Center in Warren and has ordered more protective suits that have begun arriving.

Meanwhile, state health officials will ask the Controlling Board on Monday for approval to spend $300,000 to buy extra protective equipment to ensure hospitals and other facilities have what they need in case of any confirmed cases of Ebola.

The Ohio Department of Health also has asked for permission to spend up to $500,000 to dispose of linens and any other items contaminated with the virus.

“One of the state’s key missions is supporting our local health partners in the event they need additional supplies, and by adding to our already large stockpile, we’ll be in as strong a position as possible to meet those needs,” Mary DiOrio, state epidemiologist and interim chief of the state agency’s Bureau of Prevention and Health Promotion, said in a statement.

Also on Friday, state Rep. Bob Hagan of Youngstown, D-58th, said in a statement he would introduce legislation to protect workers who have to take time away from jobs because of Ebola.

The bill would require employers to provide sick leave to employees who are following state quarantine protocols.

“The individuals who are forced into quarantine for three weeks are at no fault of their own,” Hagan said. “We must ensure that these workers are not penalized by lost wages or even the loss of their job while they follow the directions of state and national health officials.”

Youngstown State University is requiring any student, faculty or staff member who has traveled to or from the West Africa region in the last 30 days, or any student, faculty or staff member who believes he or she has been exposed to the virus, to contact Student Health Services at 330-941-3489 to discuss their travel and to evaluate their situation.

In another development, the World Health Organization bungled efforts to halt the spread of Ebola in West Africa, an internal report revealed Friday.

The document — a timeline of the outbreak — found that WHO, an arm of the United Nations, missed chances to prevent Ebola from spreading soon after it was first diagnosed in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea last spring, blaming factors including incompetent staff and a lack of information.

Its own experts failed to grasp that traditional infectious-disease containment methods wouldn’t work in a region with porous borders and broken health systems, the report found.

Contributor: Correspondent Marc Kovac and the Associated Press