Ebola – 'Tis an ill wind…'
Not everybody is mourning the Ebola crisis running out of control in Liberia. Some see a business opportunity.
An ill wind blows from the small district of Lofa in Liberia. The media was delighted when they discovered that Lofa was also the place that HIV2 originated from – they were wrong as usual, but why let the facts stand in the way of a good story. It was a member of the family of the original victim in Guinea who travelled to Foya in Lofa and later died there.
No matter the details, now health authorities around the world are ‘girding their loins’ and preparing to do battle with this deadly disease – and the personal injury lawyers are preparing to do battle with the authorities…
Even before anything has ‘gone wrong’ with the preventative measures being taken to protect health workers in the UK, the lawyers are drawing up the heads of claims by which they may be able to get next year’s mortgage payments out of the NHS.
“Arguably, the NHS Litigation Authority should be issuing guidelines to hospitals and surgeries regarding liability, but I doubt they are.
Healthcare professionals will be the most vulnerable – liability will be established in those cases far more easily than it would be in relation to hospitals and third-party patients.”
Muiris Lyons. Head of clinical negligence at Stewarts Law – who is “expecting a significant number of employer’s liability claims from staff”.
“If equipment fails, then hospital staff and patients affected will have questions for the manufacturers” – manufacturers of high-tech protective clothing and specialist equipment are also likely to face claims.
Peter Rudd-Clarke, senior associate at City-based law firm RPC.
“Hospitals have got to have protocols if ebola spreads into the general population; protocols for what to do if possible ebola patients turn up in A&E or at GP surgeries or come into contact with ambulance staff” – to avoid being sued successfully for potentially hundreds of thousands if not millions of pounds.
Patricia Fearnley, a clinical negligence partner at Thomson Snell & Passmore.
“If the disease got out of hand and medical staff were completely overwhelmed and hospitals didn’t have enough isolation beds, then that would mitigate liability.”
What a relief – if we’re all dead the lawyers will be too…
Other than the obvious candidate of vaccine manufacturers, has anybody else seen any blatant examples of “it’s an ill wind”?
- Wigner’s Friend
October 17, 2014 at 2:52 pm -
To answer your question, surely politicians are benefiting. In the current world weariness with war, I suggest that plague will stand them in good stead. Cynical, moi.
- Moor Larkin
October 17, 2014 at 3:51 pm -
Just type ebola and donate into the googlemachine………
- Engineer
October 17, 2014 at 5:00 pm -
I gather there’s a bit of a hurricane in the North Atlantic at present, which may well cause stormy, wet weather in good old Blighty next week. Can we sue the Met Office in advance for any dislodged chimney pots or felled trees that may occur?
- Cascadian
October 17, 2014 at 7:29 pm -
No, because the Met Office have a well-understood protocol of forecasting bbq summers and global warming in the face of all observed weather, thus mitigating any legal consequences. Plus to twist a term slightly that your mother probably used-you should not tort the afflicted.
- Cascadian
- Iain
October 17, 2014 at 5:47 pm -
A bit unfair perhaps but among the beneficiaries of every disaster are our large aid charities – example below including video:
- Rowan
October 17, 2014 at 6:35 pm -
If these warnings help the NHS and other agencies avoid the idiocies recently seen in America that resulted in two infected nurses and an unknown number of potential contacts, I’m all for it. I dont hold out much hope for that, though, and fully expect the lawyers to make a mint out of this.
Questions I have yet to see raised:
Is it ok to expect nurses to treat Ebola patients, or should they be volunteers? What if there are no volunteers? Do we allow nurses treating ebola patients to also treat other patients? Do we allow them to travel on public transport?
Are paramedics allowed to refuse transport to a potential Ebola sufferer? If they do transport the patient, is the ambulance taken out of service until an Ebola test is done? Who cleans it and certifies it safe to reuse if the patient does have Ebola?
Can a bus or taxi driver refuse to transport a possible Ebola sufferer? Do they even know what the danger signs are?
If a patient presents with a fever and African connections (business, travel, family, whatever) do medical staff assume malaria or Ebola? Do they gown up just in case, and treat all waste at level 4 contamination, or hope for malaria and stick to the cheaper contamination protocols?
Does A&E shut if an Ebola sufferer arrives when in the later stages of the disease? Where do all the other patients go?
Does the NHS have enough spare capacity to create level 4 isolation wards?- Ho Hum
October 18, 2014 at 12:09 am -
I think that the solution to some of these problems would be to have special ‘Ebola’ bus routes in every city, town and hamlet across the land, their distinctive bus stops having hermetically sealed, airlocked, enclosed shelters, into which could be driven, at gunpoint, all those who coughed, sneezed, or who seemed to be unduly warm, as also voluntarily joined by those who, in acts of true egalitarianism, thought that they too might be suffering from the plague
The buses plying these routes would be developments of Google’s driverless cars, so no human operatives will be put at risk. The routes would terminate at the local crematorium, where, being Tesla powered, the passenger seats could be hooked up to the power supply and the occupants fried until dead, upon which, in true Sweeney Todd style, they could be tipped out, through gaps in the bus floor, into the fiery pit below, to be consumed utterly, untouched by human hand
See, nothing to worry about. Has the added advantage, too, that the lawyers would be first to go, having got themselves unduly hot under the collar as they saw their potential clients, and cash bonanza, vanish into oblivion
- Ho Hum
- MTG
October 17, 2014 at 7:11 pm -
“What a relief – if we’re all dead the lawyers will be too…”
Lawyers can only be returned to Hell, again and again…
- waynebarwick
October 17, 2014 at 9:08 pm -
Health care workers, like soldiers, do their work to help people.
Soldiers accept they may kill or be killed or wounded. That is what they signed up for.
Catching something is a risk they are prepared to take. They do deal with sick people after all.
Care workers should be responsible for their own safety. Employers should of course have the best procedures laid out, but, really, like the people who fall off chairs stacking shelves, when told to use the elephants foot and sue, carrying out the procedures should be their own lookout.
Otherwise, there will be a whole raft of supervisors ticking boxes when the gloves are put on, the masks secured and the gowns taped.
- Rowan
October 18, 2014 at 9:40 am -
Wyane – putting on a level 3 hazmat suit correctly requires training, practice and at least 2 people. There are specific methods for taping the suit and gloves (multiple layers) together and a specific procedure for taking the suit off. If “a raft of supervisors” had been ticking boxes, we probably wouldn’t currently have 3 (or more) medical staff getting infected from treating patients.
America – one patient treated, two nurses infected
Spain – two patients treated, one infected
Africa – thousands of patients treated by MSF, 16 infected
Conclusion – a charity staffed by volunteers working in primitive conditions does more to protect its staff than modern western healthcare systems do.
Is anyone really surprised???
- Rowan
- Don Cox
October 17, 2014 at 9:09 pm -
Thermometer manufacturers will do well, too.
- Ho Hum
October 17, 2014 at 11:44 pm -
This chap seems to have his protocols in place already.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-29656462
Although the graffiti on his forehead would make one wonder if Banksy had got at him first
- Dioclese
October 18, 2014 at 12:04 am -
Apparently there is a UN fund for fighting ebola. They want to raise a billion pounds and so far have only 1% of it – that’s 10 million. Given that we have so far spent £125 million, that’s pathetic and one is forced to ask how much the USA has contributed.
The yanks are quick to tell us that we need to do more to tackle the problem and how do they respond? Buy closing their airports.
Typical.
- Cascadian
October 18, 2014 at 2:14 am -
“The yanks are quick to tell us that we need to do more to tackle the problem and how do they respond? Buy closing their airports”…………..you are misinformed Dioclese, no USA airports have been closed to incoming flights, that is not to say that the public are not clamouring for such an obvious solution to spread of the disease. I also believe you will find the USA is generously providing more assistance than any other country, that is just their way.
ps I am an North American, but definitely NOT a citizen of the USA.
- Cascadian
October 18, 2014 at 2:25 am -
“The yanks are quick to tell us that we need to do more to tackle the problem and how do they respond? Buy closing their airports”…………..you are misinformed Dioclese, no USA airports have been closed to incoming flights, that is not to say that the public are not clamouring for such an obvious solution to spread of the disease. One thing you may be assured about the Obambi administration is that they bolt the barn door after the horse is bolted. Also I believe you will find the USA is generously providing more assistance than any other country, that is just their way.
ps I am a North American, but definitely NOT a citizen of the USA. I do find unwarranted European attacks on the USA tiresome though
- Cascadian
- Frankie
October 18, 2014 at 11:24 pm -
Bonnie Greer on Sunday Morning Life last week likened the glacier-like response to the Ebola crisis from the Fortress West thus: “… It is as if the world is an ocean liner and Africa is at the bottom in steerage and we (in the West) are in First Class. It doesn’t come to us.”
She did also earlier say that we in England may be slow to respond but we would go on to do the right thing and contribute more.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04m0mxh/sunday-morning-live-series-5-episode-14
Anyone presuming to profit from this should be given the conductor’s job on one of Ho Hum’s driverless buses, alluded to above…
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