The state Department of Health has accredited and approved four hospitals including Lehigh Valley Hospital in Muhlenberg to treat patients with Ebola on Tuesday. In order to qualify for the approval, the hospital spent a substantial cost to design a patient's room with negative pressure so the air would not blow out of the room.
These precautions were made to make sure that the virus will not travel and infect other people. Aside from that, the room has a laboratory with a safety hood and a decontamination area. According to Terry Burger, director of infection control and prevention while being a nurse at the Lehigh Health Network, these facilities were designed to make certain that the patient would not cause cross infection to other people including health workers.
Furthermore, physicians, nurses, anesthetists and respiratory specialists who volunteered, underwent series of trainings which included wearing protective gear and equipment. These trainings will be used when they would treat patients with the deadly virus, Ebola. Ebola has emerged in West Africa more than a year ago and has killed over 8,000 people while infecting more than 20,000 people.
In fact, the health workers from Lehigh Valley Hospitals in their two branches in Muhlenberg and Cedar Crest have performed drills to practice on how to properly handle patients with the deadly disease. Included in their training is the proper assessment and screening of patents who traveled to West Africa during the peak of the outbreak.
The media coverage has subsided as time passed by but still, the infection rate continues to soar. In fact, Sierra Leone reports new infections which made its total infection rate to 9,772 confirmed cases as of Saturday. This data is from the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization.
Burger added that the infection rates all over the world shows how connected countries are. "We're a very global society with people traveling everywhere, every day," she said.
One reason the health department chose Lehigh Valley as an Ebola treatment center because it is near to international airports in Philadelphia, New York City and New Jersey.