“Six swine flu cases confirmed in Canada”
“US declares public health emergency as swine flu spreads”
“Critically ill Canadian denied re-entry from Mexico”
“WHO calls swine flu a public health emergency”
“Mexico quiet as 103 deaths linked to swine flu”
These are only some of the headlines that swine flu has been making and it comes as no surprise that the nursing and medical administrators are calling staff meetings to keep everyone updated and informed. I know a few other med blogs have posted about the swine flu so the only thing I’m going to say is that I’m praying and hoping that it’s nothing like SARS (which it doesn’t seem to be so far). I was doing my undergrad in Toronto when SARS broke out and it was not a pretty place. The fear was palpable in my university as three of my professors were quarantined. China town looked almost abandoned whereas prior to SARS, it was a bustling area day and night. There were talks of cancelling classes being taught by medical faculty who worked in the surrounding hospitals. Nurses Neila Laroza, Tecla-Lai Yin and Dr. Nestor Yanga were the health care workers who died from SARS. Nurse Laroza had taken stringent precautions to avoid contracting SARS. Canada and Toronto have learned much since the SARS outbreak and those lessons were applied intensively to nursing and medical curricula since then but I do not want to be in another SARS like situation, and this time as an ER nurse.
The above picture was taken at Toronto General Hospital from http://www.life.com/image/1956554
3 comments:
Great post!
This talk of swine flu and possible SARS like procedures has be pretty scared, I wont lie. I know everyone else is still taking it pretty lightly, which is fine, but can people please at least cover their mouths while coughing and sneezing on a subway?!
ps, stop leaving such aggressive comments on my blog! I'll blog when i want!
Wow. SARS never made it here, but seems like we are already dealing with a case of "unconfirmed" swine flu at our facility...and I'm home sick, i'm suppose to find out today if they start me on the Tamiflu or not. I'm usually really healthy and I take my flu shot and try not to get coughed on (impossible when the cliental of this area have never seemed to have been taught good manner or what a Kleenex is for). Good blog. I work with several Canadian Nurses and they are literally the BEST!
Scary, scary, scary... I sure hope todays medicine can deal with this one really soon. It's causing a lot of problems and I sure don't like the similarities between this flu and the virus in Mr. King's book The Stand. I'm really curious how the situation will develop...
Take care, Lorne
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