Africa

USA TODAY                                                     Oct. 19, 2014

BY Gregg Zoroya and John Bacon

The Pentagon will build a 30-person, rapid-response Ebola medical support team to aid civilian health care workers should additional cases of the virus be diagnosed in the U.S., officials said Sunday.

The effort was requested by the Department of Health and Human Services "as an added prudent measure to ensure our nation is ready to respond quickly, effectively and safely in the event of additional Ebola cases," a Pentagon statement said.

http://www.defense.gov/Releases/Release.aspx?ReleaseID=16986

The Pentagon said Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel ordered his Northern Command Commander, Gen. Chuck Jacoby, to prepare and train the team. It will include 20 critical-care nurses, five doctors trained in infectious disease and five trainers in infectious-disease protocols...

Team members will remain in a "prepare to deploy" status for 30 days after training. They will not be sent to West Africa or elsewhere overseas and "will be called upon domestically only if deemed prudent by our public health professionals," the statement said.

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NEW YORK TIMES                                                 Oct. 18, 2014

By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and MARK LANDLER

WASHINGTON — Beneath the calming reassurance that President Obama has repeatedly offered during the Ebola crisis, there is a deepening frustration, even anger, with how the government has handled key elements of the response.

Those frustrations spilled over when Mr. Obama convened his top aides in the Cabinet room after canceling his schedule on Wednesday. Medical officials were providing information that later turned out to be wrong. Guidance to local health teams was not adequate. It was unclear which Ebola patients belonged in which threat categories.

WASHINGTON POST

By Katie Zezima                               Oct. 18. 2014

WASHINGTON -Public health officials have been nearly unanimous in rejecting the idea of a travel ban between the United States and the West African countries at the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak.

But the drumbeat from politicians demanding Ebola-related restrictions on travel intensified Friday as a number of moderate Democrats joined the chorus, including Sen. Kay Hagan of North Carolina, who is enmeshed in a tough reelection fight, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii and Michelle Nunn, who is running for Senate in Georgia....

The calls have alarmed public health experts, who said a travel ban could result in the opposite of its intention and spread the virus throughout West Africa and beyond.

“It’s an 18th-century view that you can somehow place a cellophane wrapper around a whole region of the world and expect to keep germs out. It doesn’t work that way because it’s never worked,” said Lawrence O. Gostin, faculty director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University and director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on Public Health Law & Human Rights.

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