Health policy expert Betsy McCaughey says that if the Ebola virus — which has now sickened a Liberian man in Dallas — leads to any deaths in the United States, then it will be time to fire Tom Frieden, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
McCaughey, joined on
Newsmax TV by Arther Caplan, a medical ethicist at New York University's Langone Medical Center, told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner on Thursday that Frieden "ardently defended unrestricted travel" to and from the west African nations where the latest Ebola outbreak began.
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The man being treated for Ebola at a Texas hospital had recently flown to Dallas from Liberia, a center of the outbreak, and was initially sent home from the hospital with antibiotics when his symptoms first flared up.
As many as
100 other people in the area are now being monitored for potential exposure to the disease.
"If one Texan dies, Frieden should lose his job," said McCaughey, a senior policy analyst with the London Center for Policy Studies.
Caplan and McCaughey both agreed that there are ways to restrict travel from west African nations without crippling those countries' economies. Possibilities include travel visas with a 30-day waiting period, they said.
Caplan said that the CDC needs to begin informing the general public what to do if a person suspects he or she has the virus, and which hospitals in every U.S. community are equipped to manage the disease.
If people don't have that information, "the CDC isn't doing its job," said Caplan.
McCaughey doubted that all U.S. hospitals are prepared for Ebola because they're already struggling with antibiotic-resistant hospital infections that kill thousands of Americans every year.
"Many hospitals lack the infection control rigor to deal with Ebola," said McCaughey.
Caplan said that reports of a
mix-up at the medical center where the Ebola patient was initially turned away demonstrate that hospitals also need better quality control.
"I don't think we're putting the money where the quality control is," he said.
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