What a ‘national exercise’ to tackle Ebola looks like
Eight hours, volunteer actors in Newcastle and Hillingdon, a shopping centre, several ministers and wardrobes full of protective clothing – a test-run of how the UK would cope with an Ebola case.
A man in a busy Gateshead shopping centre collapsing in the middle of Saturday shoppers, then being whisked down the country to the best isolation unit in the country in London.
An individual arriving at Hillingdon walk-in centre with flu-like symptoms, saying they had recently returned from west Africa, prompting a scramble to isolate them and begin tracing their contacts.
These aren’t real scenarios, but pretend ones, designed to test whether the UK’s emergency response to Ebola cases stands up to scrutiny.
The UK has just come to the end of an eight-hour “national exercise” involving ministers, government departments and dozens of expert medical professionals, ordered by the prime minister as part of the UK’s contingency planning to make sure the public is protected in the event of an Ebola outbreak.
Volunteer actors
Volunteer actors played the part of the Ebola sufferers, and those responding to them wore the full personal protective gear to test out any flaws in the system.
The two “patients” were both diagnosed with the disease after samples were sent to Public Health England at Porton Down after initial tests ruled out malaria and placed in isolation. The Gateshead sufferer was taken from the shopping centre by paramedics, then transferred to the Royal Victoria Infirmary before being sent to the Royal Free in London – the UK’s only hospital with a high-level isolation unit, where nurse William Pooley was treated. The Hillingdon case, in the exercise, is still awaiting transfer to the same unit.
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt also chaired a COBR meeting as part of the test. He said: “We will evaluate what went well and what we need to improve.”
Hospitals regularly carry out emergency planning scenarios like this but the difference here is the involvement of the government, which says it is just one of the ways the UK is preparing for an Ebola outbreak. Experts says it is highly likely another person infected with Ebola will arrive in the UK at some point, but they say the NHS is ready.
At the same time, the UK is attempting to help countries in west Africa tackle the disease there – contributing £125m to tackling the crisis so far, which will help support 700 treatment beds in countries like Sierra Leone which have been badly hit by the outbreak.
There have been 3,865 Ebola deaths in the last 40 weeks according to the World Health Organisation, making this the by far the deadliest outbreak in history. Liberia is the worst-affected country, with 2,210 deaths, followed by Sierra Leone (879 fatalities) and Guinea (768 deaths).
