First U.S. Ebola Patient travel history reveals details of trip to Liberia

Following the hospitalization of Thomas Eric Duncan, the first Ebola patient to be so diagnosed within the United States after his recent trip from Liberia, health authorities are now calling for proper and extensive monitoring of patient’s travel history when they check into hospitals with complaints of fever, abdominal pains, and diarrhea.

Health authorities and medical experts are taking up the patient’s travel history gauntlet because the latest Ebola outbreak and first patient in the US possibly indicated to hospital officials that he just came back from Liberia on September 20 when he reported for medical treatment on September 24, yet doctors or nurses allowed him to return back home and this put his family and community members at risk of getting infected with the deadly virus. The point here is that since the patient had complained of high fever and abdominal pains following his recent trip from Liberia, hospital officials should have isolated him immediately once they knew of his recent travel history.

Pointers have emerged to indicate that the hospital was quite lax in handling Thomas Duncan’s Ebola case because some nurses were aware he just returned from Liberia, yet they were careless in isolating him or even communicating his situation to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for further analysis. The healthcare team ought to have instituted a measure of checks and balances by taking the patient’s travel history and considering this in the light of the Ebola scare from West Africa.

It is therefore suggested by medical authorities that a proper checklist that includes patient’s travel history should be document to forestall the spread of fatal diseases like Ebola during its incubation or symptomatic stages.