Some clever nurses at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center have found a safe way to prepare for Ebola treatment in one of the two new biocontainment units promised by Gov. Rick Perry in Dallas. They are using Tabasco sauce in place of the virus.
Tabasco sauce is made by McIlhenny Co. from red peppers and contains the spicy chemical capsaicin. If the sauce hits bare skin, it will cause a burning or tingling feeling, which for the nurses means they’ve been contaminated.
By practicing putting on and taking off protective gear with fake patients who have the hot sauce sprayed on them, the staff has a good way of telling if and when potential exposure could have taken place.
“In a way, it gives feedback immediately,” said Dr. Bruce Meyer, an executive vice president at the hospital. He also said the hospital has already spent “north of half a million dollars” retrofitting rooms and training staff to treat Ebola patients in isolation over the last several weeks, according to ABC News.
The hospital’s director of infection prevention Doramarie Arocha came up with the idea after the staff had first been drilling with a mix of ketchup and water (probably just to see if anything was stained). But the new Tabasco plan provided evidence that you might not even be able to see. So after the drills, staff were asked to rub their eyes and touch their lips – prime locations for a response from the spicy capsaisin. [Flashback to that time you chopped a jalapeño and then scratched your face.]
The other Texas biocontainment unit will be at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, which is also home to a high-security biolab that is already prepared to treat Ebola if one of its workers is infected while studying the virus in the lab.
[Tabasco sauce photo by flickr user Mike Mozart]
