The nurse at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital contracted Ebola after helping to treat the late Thomas Eric Duncan, but it is now being debated whether the nurse’s dog has Ebola and should be euthanized following the example set by Spain in a related incident. Registered nurse Nina Pham, 26, is currently being treated in isolation after developing Ebola symptoms, and the public is worried whether her dog, Bentley, also has the disease.
It will be recalled that Maria Romero, the Spanish nurse that contracted Ebola after treating a priest that later died had her dog euthanized by the Spanish government for fears that the dog might be a carrier for Ebola. It is now being feared by many people that Bentley, Nina Pham’s dog might suffer the same fate in the hands of the government following fears that it has the disease and could transmit it to people.
Nina has received blood transfusion and in stable condition – but what will happen to her dog?
Mike Rawlings, the mayor for Dallas assured the public that the dog will be quarantined at a safe location and monitored for any sickness. And another medical expert assured people that “pets have not been a feature of Ebola spread, whether in Africa and certainly not here in the developed world.”
In responding to Spain’s euthanization of the Spanish nurse’s dog, the International Society for Infectious Diseases states that “in some legal systems, as in the law of the European Union, the application of the precautionary principle has been made a statutory requirement in some areas of law.”
Maybe due to the fact that no known test is readily available for animal Ebola, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that there has been no reported Ebola cases in dogs and cats or other household pets so far.
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