Madrid hospital staff quit over Ebola fears

THE GUARDIAN               OCT. 10, 2014
By Ashifa Kassam

MADRID -- Concerns about a lack of training and safety standards have left some staff refusing to attend to possible Ebola cases at Madrid’s Carlos III hospital, where the first known person to contract the disease outside west Africa is being treated.

Fourteen people are in quarantine at the hospital, including four health workers who treated Teresa Romero Ramos, the Spanish nurse who contracted the virus after treating an Ebola patient repatriated from Sierra Leone.

A medical practitioner wearing protective clothing treats an isolated patient on the sixth floor of the the Carlos III hospital in Madrid, Spain. Photograph: AP

Seven people, including two hairdressers who had given Romero a beauty treatment before she was diagnosed, entered the isolation unit on Thursday. None has tested positive for the disease except Romero, whose condition was described by the hospital as serious but stable. Her treatment has included injections with antibodies extracted from the blood of Ebola survivors.

While no official numbers were available, Elvira González of the SAE nurses’ union said fear of Ebola had caused some staff to refuse to treat certain patients, while others had resigned.

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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/10/madrid-hospital-staff-quit-ebola