U.S. lacks a single standard for Ebola response
Larry Copeland, USA TODAY8:11 p.m. EDT October 12, 2014
Corrections and clarifications: A previous version of this timeline gave a different date for Thomas Eric Duncan’s first visit to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital. The hospital revised the date.
ATLANTA — As Thomas Eric Duncan’s family mourns the USA’s first Ebola death in Dallas, one question reverberates over a series of apparent missteps in the case: Who is in charge of the response to Ebola?
The answer seems to be — there really isn’t one person or agency. There is not a single national response.
The Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has emerged as the standard-bearer — and sometimes the scapegoat — on Ebola.
Public health is the purview of the states, and as the nation anticipates more Ebola cases, some experts say the way the United States handles public health is not up to the challenge.
“One of the things we have to understand is the federal, state and local public health relationships,” says Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “Public health is inherently a state issue. The state really is in charge of public health at the state and local level. It’s a constitutional issue. The CDC can’t just walk in on these cases. They have to be invited in.”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/10/12/examining-the-nations-ebola-response/17059283/
It was crazy that news reports blamed one nurse for missing the signs of Ebola. This is a contagious disease that shares symptoms with many other illnesses that people go to the ER for. We have level 1 and 2 trauma centers because not all hospitals have the ability to deal effectively with all health problems. Head trauma – take them to Hackensack If someone is burned they go to a burn center, they don’t just go to the closest hospital.
A health care worker has been infected possibly because of a breach in protocol. What nursing school or hospital is training professionals on the proper way to deal with highly infectious diseases and the hazmat suits that are required for their safety – they aren’t! You could not pay me enough to work with this infectious disease.
Now health officials realize that there needs to be training for all health care workers to identify and isolate Ebola patients. The CDC needs to take responsibility, train specialized hospitals and health care workers so that this disease can be contained.
Don’t keep telling us that we are safe and it is unlikely that it will spread . It has spread. They are learning as they go and pretending that everything is under control.