Obama thanks US doctors, nurses
October 30, 2014
Speaking after meeting with returned health workers including Kent Brantly, an American doctor infected with Ebola in Liberia, Obama said US officials should applaud volunteers for their service. The president's remarks follow controversy about measures taken by officials in New Jersey and New York to quarantine health workers returning from treating Ebola-infected patients in West Africa.
"We need to call them what they are, which is American heroes," Obama said on Wednesday. "They deserve our gratitude, and they deserve to be treated with dignity and with respect," he added.
Obama's remarks came after New Jersey officials placed a nurse from Maine in isolation in Newark after she returned from West Africa. The state released her Monday after she publicly complained and threatened to sue. However, Maine officials have since sought to keep her in isolation at home.
Experts say such quarantines could deter US health workers from heading to the frontlines of the Ebola outbreak. Warning against "fear, hysteria and misinformation," Obama did not directly mention the measures taken by individual states that have stoked controversy.
Obama also defended guidelines by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC has urged active monitoring of those at risk: checking them for fever daily for 21 days and restricting their travel and public activities for the duration of the virus's incubation period. Still, on Wednesday, California became the latest state to announce quarantine rules, declaring that individuals returning from the worst-hit areas who had come into close contact with an infected person would require isolation.
On Wednesday, the World Health Organization announced that it estimated the global Ebola death toll at 4,922 - with almost all deaths in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. More than 13,700 people have contracted the virus, according to WHO.
Ebola has so far infected just two people on US soil, with both quickly declared cured. WHO released its latest update after the available data had been revised, and suspected and probable cases of the virus were discarded following laboratory tests.
mkg/av (Reuters, AFP, dpa, AP)