Government

ASSOCIATED PRESS   by Tom McElroy                                                             Feb. 25, 2015

NEW YORK — A doctor who contracted the deadly Ebola virus and rode the subway system and dined out before he developed symptoms said the media and politicians could have done a better job by educating people on the science of it instead of focusing on their fears.

 "When we look back on this epidemic, I hope we'll recognize that fear caused our initial hesitance to respond — and caused us to respond poorly when we finally did," Dr. Craig Spencer wrote in an article published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine. (See link below.)

Spencer, an emergency room physician, was diagnosed with Ebola on Oct. 23, days after returning from treating patients in Guinea with Doctors Without Borders. His was the first Ebola case in the nation's largest city, spurring an effort to contain anxieties along with the virus. He was treated at a hospital, recovered and was released on Nov. 11.

REUTERS                                                                                               Feb. 25, 2015

CONAKRY - Guinean President Alpha Conde on Tuesday replaced the minister of territorial administration with an army general in a move the government said was necessary to strengthen the fight against an Ebola outbreak in the West African nation.

More than 14 months after the first Ebola case was reported in Guinea's forest region, the government still faces pockets of often violent resistance to the campaign against the epidemic, undermining its plans to rebuild the health sector and economy.

Bourema Conde replaces Alassane Conde, a civilian who had held the position since President Conde named his first government following his election in late 2010. He will continue to serve as a government minister with an advisory role to the president. None of the three men are related.
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NEW YORK TIMES  OP-ED BY Ron Klain, the former White House Ebola response coordinaor                                    FEB. 20, 2015

...The world needs to do a better job of quickly detecting and responding to future outbreaks in unlikely places. The President’s Global Health Security Agenda, the government’s strategy to combat infection disease around the world, will help. But vulnerable countries, including those in Africa, need their own version of our Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, so that they are not so dependent on ours.

For the hardest task of front-line epidemic fighting, our planet is too reliant on courageous and talented — but underfunded, under-equipped and volunteer-dependent — nongovernmental organizations. The world needs a permanent standing force — or a ready reserve that can be quickly organized — of public health emergency responders who have the training, gear and resources to race into a region in the early phases of epidemic control. The United States military cannot do that job every time; future outbreaks might occur in countries where our troops will not be welcomed as they were in West Africa.

WASHINGTON POST by Juliet Eilperin and Steven Mufson                             Feb. 13, 2015

WASHINGTON --If there is to be war, the fight against Ebola is President Obama’s type of war. The enemy fires no bullets and carries no bombs; it doesn’t use social media to recruit fighters and rally supporters. And the fighting can best be done by intelligent professionals who don’t try to kill people, but to save them.

On Wednesday, Obama celebrated the progress against the deadly virus since the administration launched a military and civilian effort in September. While the president emphasized it was too soon to declare “mission accomplished” — as President George W. Bush did about Iraq in 2003 — Obama said “we’re shifting our focus from fighting the epidemic to now extinguishing it.”