The first confirmed case of Ebola in Texas this week shows that the disease is only a plane, train or car trip away from appearing in other states. While health officials in Texas are working to contain the spread of the virus, their colleagues at hospitals in Maine say they're ready to handle Ebola should it find its way here.
Every day, it's Josh Frances' job to think about all of the bad things that can befall the people of Maine. He's the director of emergency management at Maine Medical Center in Portland. For Frances, the news that Ebola had cropped up in Texas this week came as no surprise.
"We just knew that it was a matter of time, the way that people come and go from every place in the world to the United States," he says.
Frances says there's just as much chance that the disease will come to Maine as there was that it would appear in Texas. You just never know. That's why Maine Medical Center has an Ebola plan in place. When patient walks into the hospital or an associated office or clinic with flu-like symptoms, the staff is already asking questions about the person's travel history.
"There's such a long incubation time with this disease, that we really need to be asking and probing for those correct questions," Frances says.
In Lewiston, Central Maine Medical Center infectious disease physician Jenae Limoges says the hospital's disaster management team is working with emergency room staff to ensure that they're prepared for a possible Ebola case.
"About what to look for, what to ask," Limoges says of preparations. "We have the ability to place people in isolation, the same as we would if we were suspecting tuberculosis."
All of Maine's three largest hospitals are equipped to isolate patients. Ebola isn't spread through the air, but can be passed on through direct contact with bodily fluids. The severe viral illness is marked by a sudden onset of fever, fatigue and muscle pain, followed by vomiting and diarrhea.
The current outbreak in West Africa, which began last March, has a near 50 percent fatality rate. Maine Center for Disease Control Director Dr. Sheila Pinette says it's a serious disease, but she doesn't expect a smiliar scenario to develop in the U.S.
"We have the advantage over West Africa in that we have a very strong public health epidemiologic investigations for contacts and we also have a well-developed health care system," she says.
Many health care organizations have baseline infectious disease plans. Kathy Knight, director of emergency preparedness at Eastern Maine Healthcare, says she is using its infectious disease plan as a template to create a specific plan for Ebola. It includes a range of strategies from containing a ground zero Ebola case to managing the wider community response.
"So this isn't just one organization, this is how the individual organization responds with their community, who responds with the regional entities, who respond with the state entities," Knight says.
That highly coordinated response, Frances says, was developed in the wake of the terrorist attacks on 9/11.
"That was one of the lessons learned," Frances says. "That we needed to have the right people understanding the planning and response efforts all at the same time."
And it's why, says Frances, if Ebola does enter Maine, the state is prepared.
