State official on Ebola: “Our job is to protect the public’s health”

Saying the United States must monitor Ebola in a much more aggressive way, President Barack Obama has called on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to more quickly deploy rapid response teams to areas where Ebola is diagnosed.

The President said Wednesday, if already-established health protocols are followed properly, “The likelihood of widespread Ebola outbreaks in this country are very, very low.”

In West Virginia, Jerry Rhodes, the director of threat preparedness for the state Department of Health and Human Resources, echoed those statements on Thursday’s MetroNews “Talkline.”

He noted how regularly health officials respond to outbreaks.

“Our job is to protect the public’s health and we’ve been doing that for many, many years,” Rhodes said. “When something specialized and acute comes up like Ebola, you don’t reinvent the wheel.”

Rhodes said the response process is not new to public health. “We have great collaborative relationships with our federal partners, with state public health agencies and our local agencies located in every county who work on these types of things constantly,” he said.

As of Thursday morning, no cases of Ebola had been diagnosed in West Virginia.

Rhodes was involved in the emergency response at Charleston’s Yeager Airport on Wednesday evening when those on board a flight from Atlanta, Ga. were held on the plane until three passengers were checked for possible exposure to Ebola.

No such exposure was found. Rhodes said the response was “out of an abundance of caution.”

“In this particular case, there was some conversation that was overheard by another passenger who misunderstood what was said, misinterpreted what was said and, sort of, put it into their own words and expressed some concern to airline officials,” Rhodes said of the Charleston incident.

Ebola, an infectious and generally fatal virus, is characterized by fever and severe internal bleeding. It’s spread through contact with infected bodily fluids.

According to the CDC, the Ebola outbreak — which is affecting multiple countries in West Africa — is considered the largest in history.

One imported case from Liberia and associated locally-acquired cases in healthcare workers in Texas have been reported up to now.