Obama’s New Ebola ‘Czar’ Does Not Have Medical, Health Care Background - CBS DC

Obama’s New Ebola ‘Czar’ Does Not Have Medical, Health Care Background - CBS DC

---

CBS DC (con't)

Affordable Care Act Updates: CBSDC.com/ACA

Health News & Information: CBSDC.com/Health

Latest News Get Breaking News First

Receive News, Politics, and Entertainment Headlines Each Morning.

Sign Up

WASHINGTON (CBSDC/AP) — President Barack Obama on Friday turned to a trusted adviser to lead the nation’s Ebola response as efforts to clamp down on any possible route of infection from three Texas cases expanded, reaching a cruise ship at sea and multiple airline flights.

Facing renewed criticism of his handling of the Ebola risk, Obama will make Ron Klain, a former chief of staff to Vice President Joe Biden, his point man on fighting Ebola at home and in West Africa. Klain will report to national security adviser Susan Rice and to homeland security adviser Lisa Monaco, the White House said.

Klain does not have a medical or a health care background.

Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., slammed the decision on Twitter.

“Worst ebola epidemic in world history and Pres. Obama puts a government bureaucrat with no healthcare experience in charge. Is he serious?” Harris tweeted.

Worst ebola epidemic in world history and Pres. Obama puts a government bureaucrat with no healthcare experience in charge. Is he serious?

— 
Rep. Andy Harris, MD (@RepAndyHarrisMD) October 17, 2014

The World Health Organization admitted to mistakes of its own in failing to contain the outbreak still spreading out of control in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

“Nearly everyone involved in the outbreak response failed to see some fairly plain writing on the wall,” the U.N. health agency said in a draft internal document obtained by The Associated Press. The response was marred by incompetency and ineffective bureaucracy, the document says, and experts should have realized that traditional containment methods wouldn’t work in an African region with porous borders and broken health systems.

Under pressure from Republican lawmakers, Obama on Thursday expressed some openness to considering restricting travel from the three Ebola-stricken West African nations. But he said health and security experts continue to tell him that the screening measures already in place for travelers are more effective.