Immigration Expert: Obama Admin Responsible for Letting Ebola Patient into U.S.
Photo Credit: Breitbart By Matthew Boyle.
President Barack Obama, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, and Secretary of State John Kerry are directly responsible for allowing Ebola into the United States, the Center for Immigration Studies Director of Policy Studies Jessica Vaughan told Breitbart News.
Vaughan points to federal law–the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA)–which she notes gives the administration “broad authority” to bar non-citizens like Thomas Eric Duncan, the first Ebola patient allowed into the U.S., from entering the country. The administration took no steps pursuant to that federal law, however, to block people like him from potentially endangering Americans.
“They have broad authority to bar any non-citizen from entering the country,” she said in a phone interview with Breitbart News. “But the INA does have a provision on the books already that bars people who have communicable diseases who of public health significance. It gives the authority to HHS to create that list. The language says it’s only people who have them who are barred.”
“So what you have to do is set up a system of screening to make sure people you’re allowing to travel into the country are clear,” she explained. “We’ve done that with some of these other diseases in the past-and the way they do that is every visa issuing post has local doctors that they work with who will screen people who get immigrant visas to make sure they don’t have tuberculosis or leprosy or other diseases. You could similarly require that people who want to travel here on visitor’s visas go through a medical screening and put the burden of proof on the traveler to show they are not infected and are not carrying the disease.”
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NBC cameraman tests positive for Ebola in Liberia
By AP.
An American cameraman helping to cover the Ebola outbreak in Liberia for NBC News has tested positive for the virus and will be flown back to the United States for treatment.
NBC News President Deborah Turness said Thursday the rest of the NBC News crew including medical correspondent Dr. Nancy Snyderman will be flown back to the U.S. and placed in quarantine for 21 days “in an abundance of caution.”
The freelance cameraman has been working in Liberia for three years for Vice News and other media outlets, and has been covering the Ebola epidemic. He began shooting for NBC on Tuesday. The network is withholding his name at his family’s request.
He began feeling tired and achy Wednesday and discovered he had a slight fever. He went to a treatment center Thursday to be tested, and is being kept there, said Snyderman, who was interviewed Thursday night on “The Rachel Maddow Show” on MSNBC.
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Photo Credit: AP / LM OteroMishandling of U.S. Ebola patient prompts CDC alert to hospitals
By Jason Sickles.
A Texas emergency room’s mishandling of the country’s first Ebola patient prompted the CDC to issue a nationwide alert to all hospitals updating them of how to appropriately respond to possible cases of the deadly disease.
“It’s a teachable moment, as we say,” Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said during a Thursday press conference.
The latest guidance includes a poster with quick rules for evaluating returned travelers and a checklist.
The move comes nearly a week after Thomas Eric Duncan showed up at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital with what officials described as fever and abdominal pain. Duncan, who had just moved to Dallas from West Africa, reportedly told hospital workers that he was recently in Liberia, one of the hardest hit areas of the deadly Ebola crisis.
Investigators in Texas are trying to track down some 100 people who might have been in recent contact with Duncan. A dozen of them are already under quarantine or being monitored for Ebola symptoms.
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For quarantined relatives in U.S. Ebola case, extra cautions, hope and prayer
By Amy Ellis Nutt.
Thomas Duncan shivered in the king-size bed, even though he was tucked under the covers and fully dressed — pants, socks and two shirts. It was Sunday morning, Sept. 28, and Duncan, from Liberia, had been in the United States visiting Louise Troh at her Dallas apartment for the past week. He felt weak and cold, he told Troh’s daughter, Youngor Jallah.
So Jallah took a quick trip to Wal-Mart and bought a $50 brown cotton blanket. When she returned, she draped it over Duncan’s shoulders and then gently lifted him by his back to try to get him to drink some hot tea. That’s when she looked into his eyes and knew in her heart that things were very bad.
“I’ve been seeing Ebola on TV, how it starts, with muscle pain, red eyes. When I see his eye, it is all red, and I think maybe this time it is Ebola virus and I should be careful,” Jallah, 35, said in an interview with The Washington Post at her nearby apartment, where she and her family have been quarantined.
She took his temperature — 102 degrees.
“I’m going to call an ambulance,” she said.
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