Obama names Ebola 'czar'
October 18, 2014
As fears continue to widen over Ebola's spread beyond West Africa, US President Barack Obama on Friday named attorney Ron Klain as Ebola "czar" responsible for coordinating the US response to the deadly disease.
Klain, 53, will begin his job amid growing fears in the United States about the spread of the virus, and as the global death toll has risen to more than 4,500.
The new Ebola "czar" will help ensure that "efforts to protect the American people by detecting, isolating and treating Ebola patients in this country are properly integrated but don't distract from the aggressive commitment to stopping Ebola at the source in West Africa," the White House said.
Klain, a lawyer by training and a former adviser to Obama, has no medical experience and his appointment was quickly criticized by US Republican politicians.
"The appointment is both shocking and frankly tone deaf to what the American people are concerned about," said Congressman Tim Murphy. "Installing yet another political appointee who has no medical background or infectious disease control experience will do little to reassure Americans who are increasingly losing confidence with the administration's Ebola strategy."
White House spokesman Josh Earnest addressed such criticism, saying "what we were looking for is not an Ebola expert but rather an implementation expert."
Global death toll rises
Ebola fears have been spreading across the United States, but the hardest-hit countries have been Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. On Friday, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that the virus has killed more than 4,546 in these West African nations.
The WHO figures represent a sharp increase in deaths since July, when less than 730 people in West Africa had been killed by the virus, which is spread through direct contact with bodily fluids of infected persons.
The United Nations recently urged the international community to "accelerate and dramatically expand the provision of resources and financial and material assistance" to West Africa, where the impact of the outbreak is extending beyond the illness itself. The outbreak has caused food prices to rise by an average of 24 percent in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, according to the World Food Program.
New US scares
A Texas health care worker who handled samples from the first Ebola victim to be diagnosed in the United States, Thomas Eric Duncan, has voluntarily quarantined herself aboard a cruise ship in the Caribbean. She is considered a "very low risk" for infection.
And in a case that illuminates the panic over the spread of Ebola in the US, the Pentagon in Washington, DC closed a parking lot and one entrance on Friday after a woman who had just returned from Africa vomited outside the facility.
Meanwhile, US health authorities are seeking to interview as many as 750 people who travelled on a plane taken by Amber Vinson, the second nurse to contract the disease in the United States. The first US nurse to contract the disease, Nina Pham, was recently moved to a specialized hospital in the US State of Maryland for treatment. She was reported to be in "fair" condition on Friday.
bw/jm ( AFP, Reuters, AP)