A former HHS secretary under President George W. Bush says he sees "lots of problems" with using travel bans to contain diseases like Ebola.

Republican Mike Leavitt was in charge of bird flu preparedness under Bush. He says that at the time, officials studied a travel ban intensely but concluded such an approach might not work.

Leavitt tells The Associated Press that a travel ban is intuitively attractive and seems so simple.

But would the U.S. expand the ban to European countries if people there got exposed? And what to do about Americans who want to come home?

Congressional Republicans are urging the Obama administration to impose a travel ban on West African countries at the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak.