(Youtube) Nina Pham, the "Dallas Ebola nurse," in an October 16 video. On Oct. 16, 2014, Texas Health Resources released a grainy video of Nina Pham, a nurse at one of the company's Dallas hospitals who had contracted Ebola while caring for the first person diagnosed with the virus in the US.

Her patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, had died about a week earlier, two days before Pham woke up with a fever.

In the video, Pham, 26, is sitting up in a hospital bed, quiet at first.

"Thanks for being part of the volunteer team to take care of our first patient," says a male voice, off-camera. " It means a lot. "

She nods.

Now, in a lawsuit filed Monday in Dallas, Pham alleges that the video was an "ambush" and that her Ebola infection was a direct result of the "gross negligence" of her employer, Texas Health Resources.

Pham, the suit alleges, was "a symbol of corporate neglect — a casualty of a hospital system's failure to prepare for a known and impending medical crisis."

While the hospital has had spokespeople telling its version of events for months, the lawsuit offers the first look at how the unthinkable happened, from the perspective of the first person to contract Ebola on US soil. Texas Health Resources is expected to contest this account.

'She did not volunteer'

On Aug. 5, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention held its first conference call to help clinicians prepare for the possibility that Ebola would show up in their hospitals. By then, the Ebola outbreak in western Africa was already historic in scale, and two Americans had been sent to the US for treatment.

By September, the lawsuit alleges, "the CDC and the American Hospital Association warned [Texas Health Resources] that Ebola was an imminent threat and that healthcare provider training and policies should be adopted... as well as safe protocols for personal protective equipment to protect health care workers."

The first time Thomas Eric Duncan showed up at the Texas Health Dallas Presbyterian Hospital in late September, he was sent home. Days later, when his condition had worsened and Ebola was suspected, he was admitted to the ICU. "Nina was told the patient would be hers," the lawsuit alleges.

From the suit:

Nina was shocked. She had never been trained to handled infectious diseases, never been told anything about Ebola, how to treat Ebola, or how to protect herself as a nurse treating an Ebola patient. The hospital had never given her any ... training or guidance about Ebola. All Nina knew about Ebola is what she had heard on television.

According to the petition filed with the court, when Pham "asked her manager what she should do to protect herself," one of her superiors "went to the internet, searched Google, printed off information regarding what Nina was supposed to do, and handed Nina the printed paper."

Given that sequence of events, the suit alleges, it's clear "she did not volunteer to be his nurse." Still, she treated him when asked.

'More like a third world country'

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(Yuri Gripas / Reuters) A member of the audience wears a sticker in support Texas nurse Nina Pham during the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing to "examine the federal government's response to the Ebola virus in the U.S."

Before entering Duncan's room, Pham learned what she could from the internet. Ebola is transmitted via body fluids like blood, vomit, and diarrhea, all of which are often produced in excess as the virus progresses. Casual passersby are not likely to have close contact with these substances, but for caretakers and nurses, they are difficult to avoid.

So Pham took several precautions, according to the lawsuit: an isolation gown, double gloves, surgical mask, and booties. But her hair and neck were left uncovered. The suit also alleges that because the hospital did not give her disposable scrubs or other clothes, "she had to wear the scrubs she wore that first day home, taking out of the hospital clothing that was potentially carrying the virus."

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