Should Nurse Hickox or Public Health Authorities Decide on Her Movements, Asks the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS)

News provided by

Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS)

Oct 30, 2014, 12:01 ET

TUCSON, Ariz., Oct. 30, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Kaci Hickox, R.N., recently returned from caring for Ebola patients in West Africa, has announced her intention to defy Maine's quarantine rule. She said she will sue for a civil rights violation if the state attempts to enforce it.

Hickox attributes one temperature measurement of 101 at the airport to being "flushed" from distress over airport procedures. Since then, she claims to be afebrile and asymptomatic. The CDC asserts that Ebola is transmitted only by contact with body fluids of persons who have symptoms.

The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) notes the following facts:

Non-contact infrared thermometers do give false positives. They also give false negatives. Sensitivity could be as low as 80 percent, meaning that they could miss 20 percent of people with fevers.
Nearly 15 percent of Ebola patients do not have a fever.
Ebola virus has been recovered by simply swabbing the skin, and persons have contracted Ebola by brushing against the bed of a deceased patient.
There are receptors for Ebola in the intact skin.
The infective dose of Ebola is 10 virus particles.
When one nurse was diagnosed with Ebola after taking a commercial flight, 800 contacts had to be traced.
Ebola is classified as a biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) organism. Since we do not have BSL-4 capability in our hospitals, patients are being cared for with BSL-3 precautions, placing workers at risk.

"Nurse Hickox's risk may be low, but it is not zero," stated AAPS executive director Jane M. Orient, M.D. "If she does have Ebola and infects someone, she is not the one who will suffer or pay the cost."

The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) is a national organization representing physicians in all specialties, founded in 1943 to preserve private medicine and the patient-physician relationship.

SOURCE Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS)