The US is to set up a rapid response health team that could be deployed to hospitals where Ebola has been diagnosed "within hours." The World Health Organization says the virus is still spreading rapidly in West Africa, reports GHN based on DW.
The director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Dr. Thomas Frieden, said on Tuesday that some mistakes had been made that might have led to a nurse contracting Ebola from one of her patients.
Frieden said that the CDC would adopt a policy of deploying rapid response teams to assist at hospitals where patients are being treated. He admitted that, had one been sent to the Dallas Hospital where Liberian national Thomas Eric Duncan was being treated in late September, then 26-year-old nurse Nina Pham might not have contracted the disease.
"I wish we had put a team like this on the ground the day the first patient was diagnosed ... but we will do that from today onward with any case in the US," said Frieden.
"We will be there, hands on, within hours, helping hospitals with the situation if there is another case," he said.
Duncan, who had been visiting the US to see family, died of the disease. Pham is still being treated in hospital.
Health authorities say the principal outbreak in West Africa is the worst on record. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, an unrelated outbreak has killed more than 40 people.