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Air Date: October 21, 2014
Host: Jim Schneider
Guest: Dr. Jane Orient
Dr. Jane Orient, is Executive Director of the Association of American Physicians & Surgeons (AAPS), a non-partisan professional association of physicians in all types of practices and specialties across the country. She is an internal medicine physician and has been in solo private practice since 1981. She is currently president of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness and since 1988 has been chairman of the Public Health Committee of the Pima County Arizona Medical Society. She is the author of “Your Doctor is Not In: Healthy Skepticism About National Healthcare.”
Dr. Orient began by describing why Omaha, Nebraska, is on the map regarding the current Ebola crisis. This is because it has one of 4 hospital units in the nation that is capable of caring for patients under Bio Safety Level 4 (BSL-4) conditions. That is the category for organisms such as Ebola.
This facility has 10 beds but some of the rooms are taken up by the lab equipment needed for care so they say they’d be over-stretched to care for 2 patients or more due to the large volume of waste that must be disposed of.
There are other facilities in Georgia and one at the National Institutes of Health but they only have one or two beds each. In addition, the necessary facilities can’t be built overnight because you need negative pressure isolation rooms, anti-chambers with decontamination showers and breathing apparatus for workers. This means that under BSL-4 conditions America can only care for a grand total of 11 Ebola patients and Dr. Orient said even that would be stretching it.
In the end, Dr. Orient believes that to stop Ebola, we need to concentrate on quarantine and contact tracing efforts. This means restricting entry rather than inviting patients to come here as President Obama is allegedly contemplating.
Jim has Dr. Orient comment on a number of points such as:
–How accurate are President Obama’s recent statements regarding the transmission and contracting of Ebola?
–Do the Ebola related statements from the Centers for Disease Control appear to support the policy of the current administration of not wanting to restrict entry into the U.S.?
–How do the protocols of the CDC compare to those of the World Health Organization?
–What do we know about Ron Klain, the recently appointed “Ebola Czar”?
–Why are New York City officials forbidding 9-11 dispatchers from saying the word, “Ebola” on the radio?
–At least 19 African nations are barring or restricting entry to individuals who have been in the Ebola “hot zone.” Other nations with restrictions include Saudi Arabia, the U.K. and France. Could there come a time when nations restrict entry of those from the U.S.?
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