Frieden to testify today
CDC Director Tom Frieden will testify today before the oversight and investigations subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The hearing, which starts at noon, also will include testimony from Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institue of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; Dr. Luciana Borio, assistant commissioner for counterterrorism policy, U.S. Food and Drug Administration; and Dr. Robin Robinson, director, Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; John Wagner, acting assistant director, U.S. Customs and Border Protection; Dr. Daniel Varga, chief clinical officer, Texas Health Resources.
The AJC will follow developments at the hearing throughout the afternoon.
“The whole society is your patient.”
That’s how CDC Director Tom Frieden described the allure of public health to a Newsweek reporter back in 2009, when he was new to the director’s job.
These days, those words have a new meaning and urgency as Frieden battles on multiple fronts — and under intensifying scrutiny — to stem what has been called the greatest health threat of modern times. If all of American society is his patient, it’s clear that the patient is reeling.
With Fox News leading the charge, a growing number of politicians and commentators are questioning the CDC’s response to the Ebola outbreak, especially here at home.
Recent days have seen a slow-motion train wreck of revelations about lapses in the handling of the so-called “index patient” Thomas Eric Duncan, who died in a Dallas hospital after bringing the virus with him from Liberia. The latest stemmed from Wednesday’s announcement that a second nurse who cared for Duncan is sick with Ebola, and that she flew on a commercial airliner the day before being hospitalized.
Wednesday, Frieden said that under CDC guidelines, the nurse should not have used commercial transportation. But a medical correspondent for CBS News reported that the nurse had called the CDC for guidance, reporting that she her temperature was 99.5, and was told that because it was below a threshold of 100.4, she could board the Frontier Airlines jet. A CDC spokesman reportedly confirmed that account.
Even before that latest flub was revealed, U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, said Frieden should go. Asked by conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham if the administration should fire the CDC chief, Sessions said, “My opinion is yes.”
Thursday, Frieden will be in Washington to face questions from a GOP-led House panel on Oversight and Investigations. Georgia Republican Phil Gingrey is a member of the subcommittee.
For his part, Frieden told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution he is focused on the battle with Ebola, not his critics.
“I understand people are scared. I understand people want things to go right,” he said in an interview Tuesday, before news of the second nurse’s illness emerged. “The enemy is the virus. It’s not a person. It’s not a country.”
And at the end of Wednesday’s daily news briefing he reiterated the refrain that has become something of a mantra: “Ebola is a hard fight. But we know how to fight it, and we know how to beat it.”
Some people find such assertions convincing; others say Frieden is allaying anxiety at the expense of truth.
To Ken Isaacs, an official at Samaritan’s Purse, a charity that works in West Africa, such pronouncements from Frieden sound “smug.”
“The fact is Ebola continues to spread,” Isaacs said. “Any kind of smugness will come at a high price.”
Others have challenged some of Frieden’s decisions in the Ebola fight but are loath to denigrate his overall performance.
“I’m reluctant to be super-critical of him. The focus on him is intense, super-intense,” said Dr. Dennis Maki, a University of Wisconsin-Madison infectious disease specialist.
Maki thought Frieden was wrong to say, soon after Duncan was hospitalized in Dallas, that any hospital that can isolate a patient can handle Ebola. He also believes that if it weren’t for political correctness, the CDC would seriously look at restricting travel from the West African countries stricken with the virus.
But his criticism stops there. “He’s doing a reasonable job under very challenging times,” Maki said. “I don’t think he’s doing anything really dumb.”
Frieden, who lives in metro Atlanta, took the helm of the Atlanta-based CDC five years ago after serving as the New York City health commissioner. In New York, he made headlines when he spearheaded a campaign to ban smoking in restaurants and initiated efforts to distribute free condoms.
Prior to that, he spent years in India putting in place tuberculosis control programs that were credited with saving upward of 1 million lives.
His experience dealing with infectious disease in a foreign country makes Frieden the right person to lead the Ebola fight, said Jack Herrmann of the National Association of County and City Health Officials.
“He had the experience, knowledge and vision to anticipate the global impact and the domestic impact in the U.S.,” Herrmann said.
Back in August, Frieden was credited by some with sounding the international alarm on the Ebola threat. His comments following his own trip to West Africa were blunt: The Ebola outbreak was out of control.
“I saw how horrific it was and how fast it was spreading,” Frieden told the AJC. “Ebola is not just a risk for Africa. If we don’t do something, we’ll be dealing with it for years to come.”
Jeff Levi, executive director of the public health advocacy group Trust for America’s Health, said Frieden helped marshal world opinion to address the outbreak.
"He was the one who put the word out about the danger and the need for a stronger response," Levi said.
Levi believes Frieden has led the effort well.
“He’s strong-willed, strong-minded and sometimes people say he’s strong-headed,” Levi said. “But in a situation like this, that’s a needed voice.”
The CDC’s anti-Ebola campaign includes more than 1,000 staff members based in the United States, plus roughly 150 who have been dispatched to Africa.
Even so, Isaacs, of Samaritan’s Purse, said the CDC was slow to respond to the crisis in West Africa, and that the effort still lags.
Frieden, for his part, said he is sticking to data and facts.
“Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. But they’re not entitled to their own facts,” he said. “I’m trying to protect the American people and the people in Africa.”
The 53-year-old director rarely shows overt emotion during press conferences. An exception came Tuesday when he described his own fear of getting the virus after visiting clinics in West Africa.
“Let me tell you, every time I had the slightest sore throat or headache I was concerned,” he said.
At times, Frieden second-guesses himself, even publicly. This week, he said he wished his agency had sent more infection control experts to Dallas to make sure the hospital was correctly following protocols to prevent the infection from spreading.
“That might have prevented this infection,” he said, speaking of the first nurse diagnosed with Ebola.
To some, his openness shows a strength of character; others see it as weakness.
But that’s just the way public health battles are fought, Frieden said.
“I tell what I know, what I don’t know and what we are doing to find out,” he said.
The world continues to learn about Ebola and how to fight it, making adjustments along the way, he said.
“The world changes. The single most important thing is to base our decisions on data. Not theory or ideas. And sometimes the data changes.”
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