EBOLA survivor Report: Nurse says hospital failed her

Associated Press

DALLAS

A 26-year-old nurse said in a newspaper interview that a hospital where she had worked in Dallas and its parent company failed her when she contracted Ebola while caring for the first person in the U.S. diagnosed with the deadly disease.

Nina Pham told The Dallas Morning News in the interview that she is preparing to file a lawsuit today in Dallas County against Texas Health Resources. She said she continues to suffer from body aches and insomnia after contracting the disease from a patient she cared for last fall at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas.

Pham alleged the hospital’s lack of training and proper equipment and violations of her privacy made her “a symbol of corporate neglect — a casualty of a hospital system’s failure to prepare for a known and impending medical crisis.”

She also told the newspaper that Texas Health Resources was negligent because it failed to develop policies and train its staff for treating Ebola patients.

In other Ebola developments, Sierra Leone’s vice president has put himself in quarantine after the death from Ebola of one of his security guards.

Vice President Samuel Sam-Sumana is set to become acting president later Sunday when President Ernest Bai Koroma leaves Sierra Leone to attend a European Union conference on Ebola in Belgium. Sam-Sumana will carry out his duties from his home.

He is the highest ranking African official to be in quarantine in this Ebola outbreak in West Africa, which is fast approaching a death toll of 10,000.