Washington D.C. – Backlash from doctors and career diplomats is mounting from the Trump administration’s reported plan to throw long-standing precedent out the window and send American public health officers exposed to Ebola in central Africa to a quarantine facility in Kenya rather than safely bring them home to the U.S. for the best possible care.
Dr. Craig Spencer, “who survived Ebola after being treated in New York City during the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak in West Africa”, put it best: “Imagine a U.S. citizen treating Ebola patients in the DR Congo. A piece of their equipment fails. They get a splash in the eye, or a needlestick injury. Or they care for a patient later found to have Ebola, without full PPE during the encounter. Under this plan, that person wouldn’t be sent back to the U.S. — to a country with an extraordinary network of hospitals built to quarantine and care for exactly this. They’d be put on a plane to Kenya.”
“Despite what the Trump administration claims, this isn’t a public safety issue,” said Kayla Hancock, Director of Protect Our Care’s Public Health Project. “There’s tried and true infrastructure in the U.S. to safely handle potentially exposed Ebola patients and provide them with the best treatment in the world without putting anyone else in harm’s way. Donald Trump would rather leave American health workers abroad behind to die than take any responsibility for shuttering USAID and divorcing W.H.O., which allowed this outbreak to go undetected for weeks and spiral into a global health threat. This is behavior completely consistent with a self-absorbed megalomaniac who cares for no one but himself, even when American lives are in jeopardy.”
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