As the city, state and country develop their response to Ebola, doctors and scientists at Columbia University discussed the medical community’s approach to the global epidemic. NY1′s Lindsey Christ filed the following report.
Experts at The National Center for Disaster Preparedness are unequivocal: the U.S. has to step up its preparations for Ebola.
“It’s not enough to ask whether we are prepared yet. I’m worried that we’re not even serious yet,” said Dr. Robert Kanter, a research scientist at the National Center for Disaster Preparedness.
The Center held a conference Monday at Columbia University to discuss the Ebola crisis on a worldwide level. And though speakers were grim about the state of preparedness overall, they were a bit more positive about the city’s approach.
“New York City, I think relative to other places, is in pretty good shape,” said NCDP Diretor Dr. Irwin Redlener.
“That’s a combination of good preparation and good luck. New York City has resources that exceed those, and expertise that exceeds that of most states, and truth be told, the first patient was a physician who accurately identified his own exposure,” Kanter said.
The key question underlying most of the conversations here at Columbia is how to ensure science remains the driving force behind the global response to this epidemic.
“I think the discussion has been distracted by denial and it’s been distracted by political polemics and its been very limited by lack of guidance and resources,” Kanter said.
That criticism extended to the blanket quarantine orders imposed in New York and New Jersey.
“If we inforce these strict, in a sense non-scientific quarantines because we are anxious or maybe overly anxious we’ll end up discouraging the very treatment for the source of the epidemic in Africa by discouraging doctors and nurses from going there,” said Redlener.
While the experts say they want scientific solutions, they don’t just mean medical science.
“Social science research to understand cultural practices that might transmit the virus. It’s great to say, ‘Just don’t practice the burial rituals you’ve been doing’ or ‘Change them in these ways.’ It’s actually very difficult. We know from HIV that getting people to not share needles, getting them to practice safer sex has been incredibly difficult,” said Dr. Robert Klitzman, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University.
They say eradicating Ebola will also be incredibly difficult, though all agreed it’s possible.
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