Emory Backtracks; DeKalb Never Threatened to End Sewer Service

Emory University officials say they were mistaken when they told the media that DeKalb County officials had threatened to cut off the hospital’s sewer service as it began to care for Ebola patients.

Two American health-care workers who contracted Ebola were flown from West Africa to Emoryto be treated in the hospital’s Infectious Disease Unit in August. Nancy Writebol was discharged from Emory’s care on Aug. 19, and Dr. Kent Brantly was Aug. 21.

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A front-page story in Tuesday’s New York Times took a look at how American hospitals are responding to the Ebola crisis. It reported that Emory officials were warned that the hospital would be cut off from DeKalb County’s sewer system when word first circulated that Ebola patients would be flown to the facility’s isolation unit for treatment.

Jim Galloway writes in the Political Insider column in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that hospital officials on Tuesday contradicted earlier comments to the Times. In fact, DeKalb County didn’t issue a threat to discontinue waste management services, a hospital spokesman told the newspaper.

“Emory was mistaken in saying that DeKalb County threatened to disconnect it from the sewer line,” Vincent Dollard, Emory’s associate vice president of health science communication, told the newspaper.

There were some initial fears by vendors when the first two Ebola patients arrived at Emory, Dollard confirmed.

Couriers would not drive blood samples from Emory to the Centers for Disease Control, initially, he said but that was resolved early on. And pizza delivery to the hospital was refused by at least one vendor in the first days of the Ebola patients’ arrival.

Here, in part, is how the Times described DeKalb County and vendors’ reaction to the arrival of the infectious patients at Emory.

“As doctors and nurses there worked to keep desperately ill patients alive in August, the county threatened to disconnect Emory from sewer lines if Ebola wastes went down the drain. The company that hauled medical trash to the incinerator refused to take anything used on an Ebola patient unless it was sterilized first.

“It doesn’t matter how much you plan,” Dr. Bruce Ribner, who directed the patients’ care, told The New York Times. “You’re going to be wrong half the time.”

The university’s specialized isolation unit is physically separate from other patient areas. Among its features is negative air pressure to circulate air from the hallway to the patient room. The hospital says all lab testing can be done within the unit, and all materials coming out of the isolation unit are sent through an autoclave to kill all infectious viruses and then sent for incineration.

Besides Emory, there are three other biocontainment units around the country equipped to isolate patients with dangerous infectious diseases: the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD; Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha; and St. Patrick Hospital in Missoula, MT.

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