Westchester Health Commissioner Dr. Sherlita Amler insists that hospitals in the lower Hudson Valley in New York are all prepared for any Ebola cases they might encounter.
“I think we are as ready as possible,” Dr. Amler said. “You never know what will come your way, but communicable disease is our bread and butter–it’s what we do.”
Medical professionals in the area are also quite certain that they will see a case of Ebola.
Dr. Harish Moorjani, an infectious disease expert on staff at Westchester Medical Center, Putnam Hospital and Phelps Memorial Hospital Center, said that it isn’t a matter of if the Hudson Valley will find a case of Ebola, but when. “It’s going to happen,” Moorjani asserted. “We live in a global economy. We have to be prepared.”
Meanwhile, the number of African countries being hit by Ebola is growing at an alarming rate. Sierra Leone, for example, recorded 121 Ebola deaths in one day this month.
Doctors and nurses also have concerns. Several healthcare workers have contracted the virus, and many have died. A nurse in Spain contracted the virus this week after taking care of a patient from Liberia who arrived in Spain.
But Breitbart recently reported that a nurses’ union is not nearly as confident as Westchester’s Dr. Amler that the U.S. is ready for Ebola. A recent poll of 400 nurses in over 200 hospitals found that many nurses feel American medical technicians are not at all prepared for the virus.
The poll results indicated that 60 percent of the nurses feel that their hospitals are not ready for Ebola, with 80 percent saying they have gotten no extra communication on hospital preparations for the virus. Another 30 percent said that hospitals do not even have enough protective gear to accommodate an outbreak.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.
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