For related articles and more information, please visit OCA’s Health Issues page and our Appetite For a Change page.


As a second healthcare worker contracts Ebola in Texas, the privatized U.S. hospital system is facing increasing scrutiny. (Photo: CDC)

Update:

The Centers for Disease and Control announced Wednesday that the second Dallas healthcare worker infected with Ebola flew from Cleveland to Dallas on Monday, the day before Amber Vinson, 29, a nurse at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital was confirmed to have Ebola. Vinson had a temperature of 99.5 Fahrenheit
before she boarded her flight. The CDC said they will interview all 132 passengers on the flight, Frontier Airlines Flight 1143 from Cleveland to Dallas/Fort Worth, which landed at 8:16 p.m. CT Monday.

Earlier:

A second healthcare worker at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital who helped treat the late Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan has now tested positive for the virus, state health officials confirmed on Wednesday.

The unidentified worker reported having a fever on Tuesday and was immediately isolated. A preliminary Ebola test confirmed the presence of the disease and confirmatory testing is now being conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

According to the Texas Department of State Health Services, officials are in the process of interviewing the patient to identify individuals who may have had contact or potential exposure to the virus.

News of the infection comes four days after a nurse from Texas Health Presbyterian, identified as the 26-year-old Nina Pham, also tested positive for Ebola.    

The National Nurses Union for months has warned that poor hospital training and oversight is putting U.S. healthcare workers at great risk of contracting the virus. The NNU conducted a recent survey of healthcare workers across the country and found that 76 percent said their hospital had not yet communicated to them any policy regarding potential admission of patients infected by Ebola.

“What concerns me is that this validated what our systems say all over the country throughout the last two months, that hospitals are not prepared to take care of Ebola patients,” Deborah Burger, co-president of NNU, told
ABC News.

A growing number of health experts are drawing a line between this gross unpreparedness and the United States’ for-profit healthcare system, under which there is minimal oversight and no uniformity between healthcare providers.