As the CDC and the Obama administration try to reassure the public they’re in control, federal agents and healthcare workers are telling an entirely different story.
After announcing yesterday that the federal government would be implementing new screening procedures at five of this nation’s top airports, in response to an infected Ebola patient showing up in the U.S., federal agents and the nation’s healthcare workers are sounding alarm bells about the country’s emergency preparedness.
According to an article from NBC News in New York, federal U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents are saying they are not prepared, and have not been trained to implement the government’s new screening procedures. An agent who works on the front lines at Newark International Airport, where these new screening procedures are supposed to be taking place today, says customs officers at the tri-state hub lack appropriate training and equipment to handle potential Ebola cases.
He told NBC News:
“They are assuring the public everything is being done, but it is not,” the agent told NBC 4 New York, adding there are currently no doctors or CDC personnel assigned to the airport for when flights with passengers from West Africa arrive.
Airport Janitorial Crews walk off job in New York over inadequate training and protection from disease.
Outside La Guardia Airport in New York, 200 airport employees responsible for cleaning airplane cabins began a 24-hour strike on Wednesday over health and safety concerns, including possible exposure to Ebola while cleaning the airliner’s cabins.
The cleaning crews, all of whom operate out of Terminal D, say they’re not properly equipped to handle the hazardous materials they regularly come into contact with — including blood, feces and hypodermic needles. Fed up over what they say are unsafe working conditions, and fearful over having inadequate protection from Ebola, the crews walked off the job.
Nation’s Healthcare Workers Warning of Coming Crisis
Last week National Nurses United, the largest union and professional association of registered nurses in U.S., put out a warning claiming that U.S. hospitals were not prepared for Ebola, or any potential Pandemic Outbreak. In their press release they claimed that 87% of their U.S. nurses have received no information or training on how to deal with Ebola – something we’ve been warning about for some time now.
Back in August we ran an article on how prepared U.S. hospitals are to stop a pandemic outbreak; in the article we cited the CDC’s own numbers, showing just how big the problem really is. According to the CDC, 1.7 million people are infected by healthcare related infections every year in this country, with over 99,000 dying from hospital acquired infections.
If our nation’s hospitals can’t even prevent normal everyday infections from spreading inside their doors, what do you think will happen during an actual pandemic outbreak?
