Health care workers are fighting measles In southern Ontario, say they think about the epidemic from the moment they wake up until they sleep.
They say that the treatment and stamp of the push of an illness have never seen in their lifetime is constant.
Some have even been infected with patients who involuntarily propagate highly infectious disease while seeking help for early but general symptoms – fevers and coughs are common before the revealing workshop appeared a few days later.
Measles have spread to more than 3,000 people in Canada this year. More than 2,000 infected people are in Ontario.
Here is an overview of caregivers on the front line of an epidemic that has particularly struck a region in the south and east of London.
“The unlucky ones”
Carly Simpson considers himself one of the “unlucky”.
Five days after developing a sore throat, headache and fever, the nurse practitioner looked at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, amazed to see red spots all over her body.
“Oh my God is measles”, Haleta Simpson.
She said measles had never gone through her mind when she fell ill for the first time in mid-March, suspected a more likely cause was her autoimmune disease, ankylosing spondylarthrite, which leads to chronic pain and inflammation.
After all, the vast majority of cases had been among the non -vaccinated and Simpson said it had been inoculated three times – including a booster in 2015 after a test revealed that her two previous strokes had not lent complete immunity.
Simpson said that it had been assured at the start of the epidemic that three shots would be sufficient to protect it. She always fell ill and was mainly in bed for days, bringing together only enough energy to walk to the bathroom. But she said that the eruption only lasted one day and has never spread to her husband or children.
“I had a light case because I was vaccinated,” said Simpson, among five percent of the epidemic to involve vaccinated people.
She suspected that she was infected with a patient who came to her clinic with virus symptoms a few weeks earlier.
The first symptoms may resemble other diseases until rashes appear, leaving health workers who examine them vulnerable to exposure.
“Is it just a cold?” Is it just a viral infection? ” She said questions that dog caregivers.
Get health news on health
Receive the latest medical information and health information provided to you every Sunday.
Shawn Cowley did not have the chance too. He noticed white spots inside his cheeks at the end of April, then a red rash on his forehead which migrated on his face, and on his shoulders and his arms.
“Fortunately for me, because I was fully vaccinated, I did not have the full weight of measles,” he said, explaining that the rash would have otherwise covered his whole body. However, it took about a week to his body to recover from exhaustion.
Cowley is a key player in the confinement of measles as manager of emergency management and preparing for the local health unit, Southwestern Public Health. His case was awarded to the hockey tournament of his son.
He finally told his colleagues that he had contracted measles but noted that there was “stigma” associated with the disease.
Cowley also felt guilty to go to the grocery store and fill with gas before being symptomatic, to potentially spread it to others.
“When you discover that you potentially have measles and the number of people I have exhibited, understanding how virulent measles is, it is really difficult to manage personally because you put other people in danger.”
“Slow burn”
The Dre Erica Van Daalen calls the epidemic of “slow burn”, but which required close collaboration between local hospitals to treat and isolate patients with measles safely.
The chief of staff of the St. Thomas Elgin general hospital said that it could see one to three patients in the emergency department on average, and often they are children.
At the end of May, three infected pregnant women delivered babies and 15 children had been admitted. These include young patients transferred from hospitals in Woodstock and Tillsonburg, who have no pediatric units.
“It’s a lot of bedside bed nurses,” said Van Daalen in an interview earlier this spring. “When the days are busy, he wears out the nurses.”
Less than seven% of Ontario cases found themselves in the hospital. But the logistics of the secure intake of a measles patient is like Tetris at the expert level.
Masked patients are inaugurated in the rear doors of the negative pressure rooms which prevent contaminated air from escaping in other areas of the hospital and infecting more people. The part is sealed and has a system that filters and exchanges air.
The risks of exposure are avoided as much as possible, even to the toilet trips, said Sangavi Thangeswaran, an authorized nurse and a practitioner of the fight against infections at the Alexandra Ingersoll hospital and at the Memorial Hospital of the Tillsonburg District.
“We ask the patient to stay in there. If he needs something like the use of the toilet, we try to give them goods or urinals, just to reduce exhibitions,” said Thangeswaran.
There are five negative pressure rooms at Woodstock hospital. When full, patients are assessed in the ambulance garage, said David Lambie, a nurse in charge of Woodstock emergency service.
This is an additional layer of logistics to navigate, said Lambie, whose hospital has been in charge of 108 patients with measles since January, including 55 children.
Once a patient is well enough for the leave, his negative pressure room is left empty for half an hour while the contaminated air is finished. Then it is thoroughly cleaned for the next patient, said Thhageswaran.
She said that each of her hospitals in the County of Oxford initially had only one negative pressure room in each emergency service, but that the cases inflated, they created three others.
As of June 12, his team had taken care of 14 patients with measles in Ingersoll and 64 in Tillsonburg.
“Challenge inherent”
Van Daalen, from St. Thomas hospital, said that deciding to unload a sick child with measles sometimes keeps her at night.
“You hesitate to send them home because you are not sure how they will land,” she said.
“There are later consequences for children who have measles. It is a very rare complication, but we will have to maintain our surveillance. ”
Dr. Ninh Tran said he had the impression of approaching professional exhaustion at the end of February.
The number of weekly Ontario cases had almost doubled for 177 over a period of two weeks ending on February 27, with almost half of the overall cases located in its Southwest Public Health Unit.
The pressure was high to draw the boxes, interrupt the propagation of the community and stop the infections. The measles was in his mind at every moment of the day and the night.
“You can feel a little tension and anxiety in all this discussion,” recalls Tran at the end of May.
“It’s always like a temporary feeling of doubt, fear, anxiety when we see figures increase and there are just a lot of things that happen to you,” said Tran about the epidemic.
“And then you have to step back and say:” Ok, it will not be useful if I am stressed because I have to – and other leaders must – find a way to move forward. “”
The propagation of measles has reflected and flowing, but Tran noted a constant drop in new cases in the middle of June.
“Although it is still early to confirm a persistent scheme, the consistency of the decrease suggests a potential change in the trajectory of the epidemic,” said Tran.
“We are carefully encouraged.”
