US health chiefs in hot seat over flawed Ebola response

Top US health officials braced for a grilling today by lawmakers infuriated over the nation's fumbling response to the Ebola outbreak, as the Obama administration scrambles to contain the disease's spread.
Centres for Disease Control director Thomas Frieden has become the most prominent target of the criticism, which has mounted as a second Texas health care worker became infected with the deadly disease after treating a Liberian man who died of Ebola last week.
Some lawmakers have demanded Frieden's resignation and others have accused President Barack Obama of a lack of leadership, while congressional leaders urge a travel ban to the US on everyone from West Africa's three Ebola-hit nations: Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

"I'd like to see the president use executive powers to begin to restrict travel. That's the key," Tim Murphy, who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight, which is holding today's hearing, told CNN.
Other lawmakers including House Speaker John Boehner and Senator Marco Rubio urged the president to consider such a ban, although some experts warned that isolating West Africa could further strain its health-care resources.
Frieden stood his ground in prepared testimony to the panel, and pledged a "whole-of-government response" to keep the hemorrhagic virus at bay in America.

"We remain confident that Ebola is not a significant public health threat to the United States," Frieden will tell the panel.

"It is not transmitted easily, and it does not spread from people who are not ill."
That is little consolation to worried lawmakers.
"Ebola has been on the world's radar screen since March and yet the United States and the international community are still scrambling to stay ahead of and stop this outbreak," House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Fred Upton said.
"The stakes could not be any higher, and as I have said before, we cannot afford to look back at this point in history and say we could have done more."
More than 4,490 people are known to have died from Ebola in West Africa, although Frieden said "these numbers may be substantially under-reported."

"There is no room for error," added Murphy.
But mistakes in handling Ebola continued to crop up in the US after Liberian patient Thomas Duncan was cared for in Texas.