Ebola

House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing:
"Examining the US Public Health Response to the Ebola Outbreak"

Today, members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee are coming back to Washington to hold a hearing related to the Ebola outbreak. ( Watch the video.)

"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. We remain gravely concerned about this ongoing threat and the committee will continue diligently investigating the response efforts and preparedness plans,” said Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI). “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.”

The hearing witnesses are the heavy-hitters in the public health world:

1. Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, Director, CDC (Read his testimony)
2. Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH (Read his testimony)
3. Dr. Luciana Borio, Assistant Commissioner, Counterterrorism Policy, FDA (Read his testimony)
4. Dr. Robin Robinson, Director, Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, Dept. of Health and Human Services (Read her testimony)
5. Mr. John Wagner, Acting Assistant Commissioner, Office of Field Operations, Customs and Border Protection (Read his testimony)
6. Dr. Daniel Varga, Chief Clinical Officer and Senior Vice President, Texas Health Resources (Read his testimony)

Absent from the list of witnesses are nurses

Nurses — the front-line of defense against Ebola — at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas voiced frustration and concern over what they viewed as a lack of preparation and training at their hospital. Now, two hospital staff at the hospital have been infected with the virus.

According to the nurses' own account of the hospital's response since Thomas Duncan, the first patient with Ebola, arrived:

1. "Hospital officials allowed nurses who had interacted with Mr. Duncan to then continue normal patient care duties, taking care of other patients, even though they had not had the proper personal protective equipment while caring for Mr. Duncan. Patients who may have been exposed were one day kept in strict isolation units. On the next day were ordered to be transferred out of strict isolation into areas where there were other patients, even those with lowgrade fevers who could potentially be contagious. Were protocols breached? The nurses say there were no protocols." (Read the nurses' inside account.)

The Texas hospital nurses called National Nurses United, the nation's largest nurses organization, to help share their story. (The RNs are choosing to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation.) NNU held a conference call with 11,500 nurses from across the country — and then sent a letter to President Obama on their behalf. They are urging the President to “invoke his executive authority” to order all US hospitals to meet the highest “uniform, national standards and protocols” in order to “safely protect patients, all healthcare workers and the public.” (Read the full letter.)

Response from Congress

Military Funding: Last week, members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, the House Armed Services Committee and House Appropriations subcommittee on Defense agreed to "redirect $750 million in the Department of Defense’s Ongoing Contingency Operation (OCO) account to support the US military’s mission in the Ebola response effort" for six months, according to Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK). The Pentagon plans to send as many as 4,000 US troops to West Africa to help run testing laboratories, build treatment centers, train healthcare workers, and provide assistance with transportation and other logistics.

Travel Ban?: Meanwhile, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bill Shuster (R-PA) and Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee Ranking Member John Thune (R-SD) are urging the Obama Administration for a temporary travel ban from affected West African countries. (Read their letter.)

Congressmen Kenny Marchant (R-TX) and Sam Johnson (R-TX) plan to introduce legislation that "would ban travel and travel visas to the US for foreign nationals traveling from or through countries designated by the World Health Organization (WHO) as having “widespread and intense transmission” of Ebola."

• Stop Ebola Act (DRAFT):

  Would impose special limitations on the issuance of visas to, and the admission into the United States of, aliens having certain associations with countries with widespread and intense transmissions of Ebola Virus Disease.

Rep. Dennis Ross (R-FL) has drafted a bill that "will restrict all commercial flights from traveling to and from Ebola affected countries until the virus is declared to be contained and no longer a threat" as determined by the Director of the Center for Disease Control.  Rep. Ross explained, "now that two of our health care workers have contracted the virus I am putting my foot down. This legislation is a more serious approach to preventing Ebola from further infiltrating our homeland."

• Contain Ebola and Stop the Epidemic (CEASE) Act (DRAFT):

  Would ban the arrival of any commercial aircraft from a country in which the Ebola virus disease has reached epidemic proportions as determined by the Director of the Center for Disease Control. Would deny a visa to any individual whose travel itinerary includes a departure from such a country.

Related Bills: While Congress has been in recess for nearly a month, there are several bills related to public health funding, Ebola and nurses that are still pending. Share your voice with POPVOX:

• Accelerating Biomedical Research Act (HR 5580):

  (Also S 2658 in the Senate.) "Would allow the budget cap put in place by the Budget Control Act (BCA) to be adjusted for increased investments in the National Institute of Health (NIH)," according to bill sponsors. "The bill would allow appropriations to increase NIH funding by 10 percent for the first two years and five percent each year thereafter."

• End Neglected Tropical Diseases Act (HR 4847):

  –Bipartisan– "Would more broadly increase research and assistance to help developing countries contain diseases before they spread internationally," according to the bill sponsor.

• National Nursing Shortage Reform and Patient Advocacy Act (S 739):

  Would "establish minimum nurse-to-patient ratios that will save lives, improve the quality of care and help to address the nursing shortage by creating a work environment that encourages nurses to remain in the hospital workforce; provide whistleblower protections to protect the right of nurses to advocate for the safety of patients and report violations of minimum standards of care; invest in nursing mentorship demonstration programs to better prepare nurses for work in a hospital setting," according to the bill sponsor.

• American Cures Act (S 2115):

  (And America HEALS Act (HR 4384) in the House.) "In 2011, fifty-three percent of all funding for basic research came from the federal government. At NIH – the foremost biomedical research institute in the world – the number of research grants the agency is able to fund has declined every year for the past 10 years. The American Cures Act would reverse that trend by augmenting federal appropriations for biomedical research with a mandatory trust fund dedicated to steady growth in research conducted at NIH, CDC, DHP, and the Veterans Medical & Prosthetics Research Program. Each year, the bill would increase funding for each agency and program at a rate of GDP-indexed inflation plus 5 percent," according to the bill sponsor. 

• House Ebola Resolution (HRes 701):

  –Bipartisan– Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the current outbreak of Ebola in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia is an international health crisis and is the largest and most widespread outbreak of the disease ever recorded.

• Senate Ebola Resolution (SRes 541):

  –Bipartisan– recognizing the severe threat that the Ebola outbreak in West Africa poses to populations, governments, and economies across Africa and, if not properly contained, to regions across the globe, and expressing support for those affected by this epidemic. — Passed the Senate on Sept. 18. — 

Please keep in mind that highlighting a bill doesn't imply a POPVOX endorsement in any way. Rather, we're simply trying to offer one more way to stay informed of an overwhelmingly complex legislative system.