Misunderstanding sends Ebola team to Rochester home

The Rochester Fire Department initiated its Ebola response plan for the second time in a month on Sunday, after a man called 911 to report his wife was experiencing flu-like symptoms.

A few minutes after the call, 12 first responders arrived at the home, four wearing biohazard protective gear. There was just one problem: she was not suffering from Ebola.

Deputy Fire Chief Steve Belau said the miscue occurred because the dispatcher did not understand the Somali caller, who had limited English skills. As a result, the dispatcher thought the caller said that his wife had been to Mali, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has added to the list of countries that travelers should take precautions in if visiting.

The CDC recommends that travelers to Mali protect themselves by avoiding contact with the blood and body fluids of people who are sick, because of the possibility they may be sick with Ebola.

The Rochester 911 center sent the team to the southeast Rochester home Sunday morning after receiving the emergency call. The caller told the dispatcher his wife had a fever and chills and was vomiting.

Belau said the dispatcher asked some standard questions from the CDC, such as whether the person has traveled to Africa within the last three weeks.

"Then, if they say yes, then it gets refined further to West Africa and then to Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea," he said. "And now there's a fourth, including Mali."

CDC officials added Mali to the center's travel advisory list last week. Belau believes the caller thought the dispatcher was asking if his wife was Somali and said "yes."

"There was some confusion over Somali and Mali, so the dispatch communications that translated to the emergency responders was that they had someone with flu-like symptoms who had recently been to Mali," Belau said.

Once at the home, firefighters were able to ask whether she had been to Mali a number of ways until the confusion was cleared up until they understood the man.

Belau said when language is an issue, dispatchers often ask to speak to English-speaking children or relatives. The dispatch unit does not have Somali speakers on staff but subscribes to a service which connects dispatchers with interpreters by phone. But he said it's not always easy to access that service.

"You have to know what language you're dealing with in order to make the request," he said. "And because of the language barrier that was present, it couldn't be ascertained what the country of origin was of the person who was making the 911 call."

State health officials say they have not received any requests from local dispatchers specific to language training or interpreter services. But they are monitoring approximately 75 people who have returned to Minnesota from Ebola-affected countries, according to Health Department Spokesman Doug Schultz.

The monitoring lasts 21 days, which is the incubation period for Ebola.

But because Mali was just added last week, Belau said it was possible the woman had traveled there but was not under the health department's surveillance.

Belau said it's possible that dispatchers will not understand people with limited English skills.

Because Minnesota's home to a large Somali population, he cautions other dispatchers and first responders to be careful when they talk to non-native English speakers and ask about Mali.