From the President’s Desk: Making disaster readiness routine, 1/15

Create PDF

Gene N. Herbek, MD

January 2015—Ebola virus disease had taken 6,900 lives in West Africa and exactly one in the United States as of Dec. 18, 2014. The World Health Organization in August had declared the West African crisis to be a public health emergency of international concern. Yet EVD received little attention in the U.S. until a patient who had traveled from Liberia was diagnosed at Texas Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas on Sept. 30 and died eight days later.