Attorney for nurse who survived Ebola says hospital used her ‘as a PR pawn’

A nurse who became one of the faces of the fight to contain Ebola in the U.S. last year is lashing out at the hospital where she worked.

“I wanted to believe that they would have my back and take care of me, but they just haven’t risen to the occasion,” Nina Pham said of Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas in an interview published in The Dallas Morning News.

Pham contracted the illness while treating Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person diagnosed with Ebola within the United States. Duncan died, but Pham and another nurse, Amber Vinson, recovered through treatment with experimental drugs.

Pham is suing the hospital with claims of lingering body aches and insomnia, seeking damages for physical pain and mental anguish. She also says the hospital didn’t properly train her and other staffers to handle Ebola patients, nor did it provide adequate protective gear.

Beyond that, she says the hospital made her “a symbol of corporate neglect.” Her attorney, Charla Aldous, told the paper that the hospital “used Nina as a PR pawn.”