Obama Names Ron Klain To Coordinate US Response to Ebola

This Friday, U.S. President Barack Obama finally decided to name a “coordinator for the response to Ebola,” who will be responsible for managing the efforts to combat the virus on the national level, while the three infected people in the country show signs of stability.

Ron Klain, ex-chief of staff of Democratic vice presidents Al Gore and Joseph Biden, will be known as the “czar” responsible for centralizing activity at the federal level to respond to the Ebola virus in the U.S.

This post “assures that the work to protect U.S. citizens via detention, isolation and treatment of Ebola patients in the country is integrated in an effective way, without ignoring the necessity to stop Ebola at its origin point in West Africa,” a White House official, who asked to remain anonymous, explained in an email.

In a meeting with the Ebola response team, Obama left the possibility of naming someone to coordinate efforts to the last minute on Thursday. “It may be appropriate for me to appoint an additional person, not because they haven’t been doing an outstanding job, really working hard on this issue, but they are also responsible for a whole bunch of other stuff,” Mr. Obama told reporters.

The team closest to the president in this crisis consists of Secretary of Health Sylvia Burwell, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Tom Frieden, and National Security Advisors Susan Rice and Lisa Monaco. Burwell and Frieden take on the start of flu season, and Rice and Monaco are responsible for coordinating Washington’s offensive against the jihadi Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq. As such, the mandate indicates that “expanding the bandwidth” with the inclusion of Klain can “ensure the best response” of the government.

The anonymous White House official ruled out the possibility that Obama will hold an official act this Friday to announce the appointment of the “czar” against Ebola, and indicated that Klain respond directly to Rice and Monaco.

For his part, Secretary of State John Kerry lobbied this Friday, in a meeting of international diplomats in Washington, to strengthen international response with more money and aid for West African nations that are combating the virus at its origin. Kerry qualified the response as “a test of global citizenship,” affirmed that only one-third of the funds requested by the United Nations had been received, and estimated remaining financial needs at around $1 billion.

As such, this Friday, the White House released a report to inform the population on the “minimum” risks of Ebola infection and advised that, given the media coverage, “it is easy to misinterpret facts and distort the truth.” The U.S. administration is confronting recent criticism for its response to Ebola and has ruled out, for now, vetoing travel from countries most affected by the outbreak (Liberia, Guinea-Conakry and Sierra Leone) as requested by various Republican congressmen, among them the Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner.

U.S. concern has been increasing since the death of Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian national, in Texas due to Ebola, and the detection of the virus in two of the nurses who cared for him during the 10 days prior to his death.

The infected nurses who treated Duncan in Dallas, Nina Pham and Amber Joy Vinson, have been transported to the center of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, and to Emory Hospital in Atlanta, respectively; both are in stable condition. Criticism has centered around Vinson traveling by plane from Cleveland, Ohio to Dallas this Monday, when she was already showing signs of fever.

This Thursday, CDC Director Tom Frieden recognized before Congress that the nurse should not have traveled, although it was a CDC employee who gave the go-ahead because her fever was below the threshold level set by the organization.

For his part, the third Ebola patient, Ashoka Mukpo, the NBC journalist repatriated from Liberia following his contraction of the disease, is being treated in a hospital center in Nebraska and has shown signs of improvement.

According to the last WHO count, the Ebola epidemic devastating Guinea-Conakry, Liberia and Sierra Leone has infected more than 9,000 people, 4,500 of which have died.