"Ebola Nurse" Nina Pham Will Sue Employer

Texas-based nurse, Nina Pham, was the first known person to contract Ebola in America. Pham was diagnosed with the often-deadly disease after treating Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian man who later died of the disease. The nurse told the Dallas Morning News that she will sue Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas and its parent company Texas Health Resources.

Via Dallas Morning News:

Pham says she will file a lawsuit Monday in Dallas County against Texas Health Resources alleging that while she became the American face of the fight against the disease, the hospital’s lack of training and proper equipment and violations of her privacy made her “a symbol of corporate neglect — a casualty of a hospital system’s failure to prepare for a known and impending medical crisis.”

She says that Texas Health Resources was negligent because it failed to develop policies and train its staff for treating Ebola patients. She says Texas Health Resources did not have proper protective gear for those who treated Duncan.

Pham gave a long interview to the newspaper and it’s worth reading in whole. In the interview she outlines the confusion and poor training health workers at Texas Presbyterian received, as well as the moment she learned that she had contracted Ebola. “It was very scary,” Pham told the paper. “My time at Presbyterian is a bit blurry just because I was in and out of having to take pain medications and just being very, very, very fatigued the whole time. One of the hardest things about having Ebola was the extreme amount of fatigue.”

Pham also spoke about the long-term side effects of the experimental Ebola treatment that she received. While the treatments might have saved her life, she’s still dealing with the physical aftermath including organ failure and sensory changes.