Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Eventful day today with another visit to the White House and once again meeting with the President. The President wanted to show his support for health care workers who have returned from West Africa, those who will be going soon to West Africa, and the NIH nurses and doctors who had taken care of There were several events. At approximately 3 PM the president met in the Green Room with Kent Brantly, myself, and a group of healthcare workers including Dan Chertow from NIH who had returned from Liberia about 1 month ago, people from Hopkins, people from Samaritan's purse, as well as three NIH nurses – Glory Inwang, and Anitra Fitzgerald- Monroe, and Kimberly Jeffries. He congratulated everyone, took individual pictures with each of us and then went into the East Room where he was introduced by Brantly and gave a compassionate speech on how healthcare workers were heroes, and how we should treat them with respect and how we should monitor and allow them to move about according to principles consistent with the scientific data. This was obviously a reiteration of what he had said before and what I have been saying continually on national TV. However, it was clearly also a thinly veiled jab at Gov. Christie who has instituted the quarantine of returning health care workers in New Jersey. Following the ceremony I adjourned to the Roosevelt Room with Raj Shah, Sylvia Burwell, Gayle Smith, and Ron Klain, to meet with the cohort of healthcare workers for the purpose of learning from them about their experiences in getting suggestions from them about how to improve our effort in response to the Ebola epidemic in Africa and at home. I had interesting discussions with . He told me that there was no way the he got infected while in the ETUs treating Ebola patients since he was completely covered with PPEs, he is experienced and there were no breaches. He believes that he got infected when he was called to the ER to see a potential Ebola patient (woman). He was dressed in “contact” dress (not full PPE) but he did not touch the patient and called for a nurse to admit the patient since she clearly had Ebola. Accompanying the woman was her adolescent daughter who was crying and very upset that her mother was sick. took the girl outside to comfort her. He took off his gloves so as not to contaminate the girl and put his arm around her shoulder. When he looked at her, it became clear that she was likely also sick. She ultimately ran away and was never documented to have Ebola, but feels that this was the likely incident that go him infected, i.e. touching without gloves an Ebola patient. He did not fully realize this until he later reflected on that incident in the ER. After that I came back to the NIH and I practiced putting on personal protective equipment with Rick Davey. The purpose of the practice was because we are hosting a group of TV doctors tomorrow brought to the NIH by the White House to demonstrate to them our Special Clinical Studies Unit and how we Don and Doff our PPE's. It should be a good day tomorrow.