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CDC says it could have done more to contain Ebola

 
Taking no risks: Army Staff Sgt. Samuel Hines, left, helps Cpl. Zachary Wicker tape gloves to his uniform in Fort Bliss, Texas, on Tuesday. About 500 Fort Bliss soldiers are preparing for deployment to West Africa, where they will support military efforts to contain the Ebola outbreak.
Taking no risks: Army Staff Sgt. Samuel Hines, left, helps Cpl. Zachary Wicker tape gloves to his uniform in Fort Bliss, Texas, on Tuesday. About 500 Fort Bliss soldiers are preparing for deployment to West Africa, where they will support military efforts to contain the Ebola outbreak.
Published Oct. 15, 2014

FORT WORTH, Texas — The nation's top disease fighting agency acknowledged Tuesday that federal health experts failed to do all they should have done to prevent Ebola from spreading from a Liberian man who died last week in Texas to the nurse who treated him.

The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Tom Frieden, also outlined a series of steps designed to stop the spread of the disease in the United States, including increased training for health care workers and changes at the Texas hospital where the virus was diagnosed, to minimize the risk of more infections.

A total of 76 people at the hospital might have had exposure to Thomas Eric Duncan, and all of them are being monitored for fever and other symptoms daily, Frieden said.

The announcement of the government's stepped-up effort was made after top health officials repeatedly assured the public over the past two weeks that they were doing everything possible to control the outbreak by deploying infectious-disease specialists to the hospital where Duncan was diagnosed with Ebola and later died.

"I wish we had put a team like this on the ground the day the patient — the first patient — was diagnosed. That might have prevented this infection. But we will do that from today onward with any case anywhere in the U.S.," Frieden said.

Frieden described the new response team as having some of the world's leading experts in how to care for Ebola and protect health care workers. They planned to review everything from how the isolation room is physically laid out, to what protective equipment health workers use, to waste management and decontamination.

Frieden said he was fully aware of the fear among health care workers in Texas and around the country about the risks of contracting the virus, should it spread further.

President Barack Obama, speaking at the end of a meeting with U.S. and allied military leaders, declared that "the world is not doing enough" to fight Ebola. "Everybody's going to have to do more than they are doing right now," he said.

Nina Pham, a 26-year-old nurse in Dallas, became the first person to contract the disease on U.S. soil, as she cared for Duncan.