CDC Director Tom Frieden: ‘We Know How To Control Ebola’

“Ebola spreads only by direct contact with a patient who is sick with the disease or has died from it or with body fluids. Ebola is not new, although it’s new to the U.S..

We know how to control Ebola. Even in this period -- even in Lagos, Nigeria, we’ve been able to contain the outbreak. We do that by tried and true measures of finding the patients promptly, isolating them effectively, identifying their contacts, ensuring that if any contact becomes ill, they are rapidly identified, isolated, and their contacts are identified.

But there are no shortcuts in the control of Ebola, and it is not easy to control it. To protect the United States, we have to stop it at the source. There’s a lot of fear of Ebola, and I will tell you, as the director of CDC, one of the things I fear about Ebola is that it could spread more widely in Africa.

If this were to happen, it could become a threat to our health system and the health care we give for a long time to come. Our top priority, our focus, is to work 24/7 to protect Americans. That’s our mission. We protect Americans from threats, and in the case of Ebola, we do that by a system at multiple levels.

In addition to our efforts to control the disease at the source, we have helped each of the affected countries establish exit screening so that every person leaving has their temperature taken. In the two month period of August and September, we identified 74 people with fever. None of them entered the airport or boarded the plane. As far as we know, none of them were diagnosed with Ebola, but that was one level of safety.

Recently, we’ve added another level of screening people on arrival to the U.S. that identifies anyone with fever here, and we’ve worked very closely with the department of homeland security and customs and border protection to implement that program, and i’ll be happy to provide further details of it later.

We’ve also increased awareness among physitians throughout the U.S. to think Ebola, and anyone who has fever and/or other symptoms of infection, and who’s been to West Africa in the previous 21 days. We’ve established laboratory services throughout the country so that not all laboratory tests have to come to the specialized laboratory at CDC.

In fact, one of those laboratories in Austin, Texas identified the first case here. We also have fielded calls from concerned doctors and public health officials throughout the country. We found within 300 calls, only one patient, Mr. Duncan, had Ebola, but that’s one too many. And we’re open to ideas of what we can do to keep Americans as safe as possible as long as outbreak is continuing.

We also have established emergency response teams from CDC that will go within hours to any hospital that has an Ebola case to help them provide effective care safely.”