CDC experts to deploy to Texas if patient has Ebola: official

By Marice Richter DALLAS (Reuters) - U.S. health specialists are ready to deploy to Dallas if a patient being evaluated for Ebola is found to be carrying the disease that has killed thousands of people in West Africa, a Dallas County official said on Tuesday. Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas officials said in a statement on Monday that an unnamed patient was being tested for Ebola and had been placed in "strict isolation" due to the patient's symptoms and recent travel history. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is expected to provide initial test results on the patient later on Tuesday, hospital officials said. Texas and Dallas County health officials are in close contact with the CDC, which would send its experts to Dallas if tests on the patient confirm Ebola, said Zach Thompson, director of the Dallas County Department of Health and Human Services. "Everyone is preparing for the worst and hoping for the best," he said. The United States is sending some 3,000 soldiers to West Africa to build treatment centers and train local medics. At least 3,091 people have died from Ebola since the West African outbreak was first identified in Guinea six months ago. There have been no confirmed cases of Ebola being contracted in the United States but several American aid workers in West Africa have been brought back for treatment of the disease. An American physician volunteering in Sierra Leone was admitted for treatment to an isolation unit at the U.S. National Institutes of Health medical center in Bethesda, Maryland, on Sunday. Emory University Hospital in Atlanta admitted an American doctor infected with the virus to the same isolation unit where missionaries Nancy Writebol and Dr. Kent Brantly were treated and discharged in August. (Reporting by Marice Richter; Writing by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Eric Beech)