Missoula Schools to Plan for Ebola Outbreak Scenario Next Week

Next week, Missoula County School District One will begin discussions on how to handle outbreaks of contagious diseases. Superintendent Alex Apostle said the meetings are in response to the outbreak of Ebola in Texas.

"This Ebola outbreak is a little different," Apostle said. "I'm calling a meeting on Monday with various individuals. The next step would be to sit down with members of the community so that if something happened, and hopefully it will never happen, but if it does, we all need to be on the same page."

A variety of different stake holders will be invited to the meetings before the ideas are taken to the public.

"I'm going to be reaching out, of course, to our nursing staff here internally, the health department, and potentially I would like to reach out to the hospitals just to make sure we do have a plan in the worst case scenario," Apostle said.

Apostle said that there are already procedures in place to deal with outbreaks of influenza and diseases like Enterovirus D68, the latter of which has now been diagnosed in 10 Montanans.