Food and Drug Administration
FDA Guidelines Thwart Ebola Screening at U.S. Hospitals
Dallas hospital had the same machine the military uses in Africa to screen for Ebola--but federal rules restricts its use.
Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital has an Ebola screening machine—the kind the military is using to quickly diagnose the virus in Africa—that could have flagged the cases in Texas much more quickly, but FDA guidelines prevent hospitals from using the machines to actually screen for Ebola.
It’s a toaster-sized box called Film Array, produced by a company called BioFire, a subsidiary of bioMérieux and it’s capable of detecting Ebola with a high degree of confidence—in under an hour.
Incredibly, it was present at the Dallas hospital when Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan walked through the door, complaining of fever and revealing he had just come from Liberia. Duncan was sent home, but even still, federal guidelines prohibited the hospital from using the machine to screen for Ebola.