raging Ebola crisis needs a better coordinated response from government and health officials to stem an outbreak that may produce more victims than the tally of all previous epidemics of the deadly virus, the head of the U.S.’s disease tracking agency said.
Thomas Frieden, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said “core public health interventions” -- quickly diagnosing patients and isolating them before they infect others -- are the key to stifling the the disease now centered in three West African countries.
“If you leave behind even a single burning ember, like a forest fire, it flares back up,” Frieden told Congress at a hearing in Washington. “The challenge really isn’t the strategy. The challenge is the implementation.”
While Frieden termed the outbreak a crisis, a top official at a nonprofit treating patients in Liberia later said the U.S. and Europe essentially ignored the outbreak until two Americans became infected in July.