Some words of caution from :
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have now called for the U.S. to ban individuals traveling from the countries impacted by the Ebola outbreak from coming into the U.S. if they are not American citizens.
But Fauci said that such a ban could just be "counterproductive."
"[W]hen people come in from a country it's much easier to track them if you know where they're coming from," he said about a travel ban on ABC's "This Week." "But what you do if you then completely ban travel there's the feasibility of going to other countries where we don't have a travel ban and have people come in."
Instead Dr. Fauci advocates this:
More U.S. hospitals need personnel prepared to handle and treat Ebola patients, the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases told NBC News. In an interview with NBC's "Meet the Press," Dr. Anthony Fauci said that pre-training is vital - and the four major biocontainment units in the U.S. are not enough.
“We need to have more than just the four [units] in which you have people who are pre-trained, so that you don't come in, and then that's the first time you start thinking about it,” Fauci said. “It can't just be four. We may not even need any more, and we hope we don't.”
“But in case there are more cases, we want to make sure we have people who are pre-trained, pre-drilled over and over, and have the right protocol going.”
The four locations with biocontainment units specially equipped to handle infectious diseases are Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland, St. Patrick Hospital in Missoula, Montana and the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. With current staffing capabilities, the four units can handle a combined total of 11 patients.
