English: Biosafety level 4 hazmat suit: researcher is working with the Ebola virus (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The latest news from Texas, according to this CNN article, is deeply worrying.
via U.S. nurse with protective gear gets Ebola, but how? – CNN.com.
Whilst I can understand that guidelines can easily be bypassed, in the case of a medical crisis, this is not really acceptable. Effective quality assurance is surely mandatory?
President Obama has announced that he has a strategy for dealing with Ebola. Sadly, I worry because we have heard before of Obama’s strategies.
Surely, we need to avoid panic and global quality standards should be issued by the World Health Organization (WHO) ?
Open this link for WHO Ebola Virus Disease Global Alert and Response (GAR)
Thoughts?
Dr Alf's Blog 
The gloves that the healthcare workers may be permeable. No laytex or vinyl glove is completely impermeable. Gloves should be tested. Perhaps the Ebola Virus microbes are small enough to penetrate gloves. Also when emptying human waste into a toilet there is a great chance for back splash. The nurses generally double glove, but they probably should double gown etc. as well.masks and everything. Doctors generally don’t handle human waste products. so that is probably why the nurses have contracted the virus. All receptacles should be covered especially when flushing. It probably would also be beneficial if a disinfectant is involved while disposing of human waste products. It appears to me that typical dressing for isolation is not enough. Absolutely tape every potential open area of a suit shut. An oral swab to test for Ebola would be a great achievement! Has anyone tried an oral swab to detect HIV on an Ebola patient? Perhaps that type of swab would work. All of the greatest scientists should get together and brainstorm. We should not panic,but stay vigilant. It may be a good idea for a second person dressed in isolation gear to undress the primary caregiver while using instruments like hemostats to take off the contaminated isolation outfit.
Just some thoughts.
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Dr Alf is right to be concerned.
Ebola was created as a biological weapon, probably by Fort Detrick and Porton Down, and it is supposedly only transmissible by contact with bodily fluids.
The Spanish nurse got this disease when she came into contact with an infected part of her suit when taking it off.
If the disease is transmissible via sneezing or contact with infected surfaces as well as bodily fluids then we really are in a lot of trouble.
The US Centre for Disease Control maintains that Ebola is only transmissible via contact with bodily fluids and hopefully what they are telling us is accurate and Ebola has not mutated or changed in some way so as to make it transmissible via the air or contact with an infected person.
President Obama is hardly an accurate source for information and if he is a strategist then I am a Dutchman.
Procedures need to be tightened up, secure quarantine facilities need to be created where infected people can be treated away from everyone else.
The prospect of Ebola afflicted people being placed into a side room in my local hospital or GP surgery is not one I am happy with, given the crowded conditions and the number of pensioners there with poor health and weak immune systems who might catch the disease and spread it in ways that have not yet been envisaged or have been envisaged but not yet talked about for fear of spreading panic.