Public Health: The man whose one job is to safeguard America's health has failed, saying that we must change our responses to Ebola after a Dallas health care worker becomes infected despite the rules he championed.
After 26-year-old Dallas health care worker Nina Pham became the first person to contract Ebola on U.S. soil, Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), said during a press conference that (we) "have to rethink the way we address Ebola control."Yes, we do. Pham's infection, just as Thomas E. Duncan's death in Dallas after a multistop trip from Liberia, wasn't supposed to happen with CDC's protocols. Frieden's repeated assurances that everything possible was being done have been demonstrably false.
Blaming Pham, who contracted the disease while caring for Duncan despite taking recommended protections and wearing the proper gear, Frieden said that "at some point there was a breach in protocol, and that breach in protocol resulted in this infection."
He later walked back his remarks. But if the protocols were adequate, why do we need to rethink them?
Pham isn't alone. Maria Teresa Romero Ramos, a Spanish nurse's aide, contracted the disease while caring for an Ebola patient in a Madrid hospital.
She got infected when her gloved hand inadvertently touched her face while removing her protective gear.
In August, two American aid workers who contracted Ebola while working in Liberia returned to the U.S. for treatment. That those trying to treat Ebola patients and fight the disease's spread — people aware of the dangers and practicing the prescribed protocols — still catch the disease doesn't bode well. Bringing back infected Americans under controlled conditions is one thing. Unrestricted air travel from West Africa is quite another.


















