Ebola triggers political turmoil in U.S., Spain

NEW YORK –With echoes of the U.S. scene, the Ebola outbreak has become a political crisis in Spain as voters vent anger toward the conservative government of Mariano Rajoy for being slow to appreciate the serious of a health crisis that caught the nation's public hospitals unprepared.

In the U.S., meanwhile, nurses Nina Pham and Amber Joy Vinson both contracted Ebola treating Liberian victim Thomas Eric Duncan, despite constant reassurances by Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Prevention in Atlanta, that the CDC understood the disease and had adequate protocols in place to contain it.

Now, nurse Kaci Hickox, released Monday from hospital quarantine after protesting her civil rights had been violated, has prompted a rebuke New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie by the Obama administration for suggesting a mandatory quarantine could be placed on health-care workers returning from West Africa after treating Ebola victims.

Hickox objected to being placed in mandatory hospital quarantine simply because Dr. Craig Spencer, who treated Ebola patients in Guinea with Doctors Without Borders, passed health screening on his return Oct. 17 to the U.S.

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With polls showing more than three-fourths of Americans supporting some form of an Ebola travel ban, the Obama administration's resistance risks a political fight, as support in Congress for a ban builds.

In Spain, Javier Limon, husband of nurse Teresa Romero, the first person to contract Ebola in Europe, went public with a video from his hospital room in quarantine. He castigated the Spanish government for its "lousy treatment" of the case, which has included euthanizing the couple's pet dog as a precaution.

Romero contracted Ebola Oct. 6 after treating in a Madrid hospital two Spanish missionaries who were infected in West Africa. The missionaries returned by air to Spain, one in August and the other in September, via air travel, with neither showing signs of the disease while they traveled. The virus has an incubation period of up to 21 days in which no symptoms of the disease are apparent.

So far, the Spanish government, much like the Obama administration, has joined with the World Health Organization in refusing to impose travel restrictions on travelers from West Africa. They argue open travel is critical to the effort of international health organizations to combat the disease in countries where the virus continues to rage, particularly Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Spanish journalist Gaelle Lucas, in an article published in Paris Monday, reported the Romero case in Madrid has triggered a political crisis for the Rajoy government..

"How did we get here?" Lucas asked.

He said Spanish voters have reacted with astonishment and indignation that Spain's public health system, traditionally presented as one of the most efficient in Europe, failed to adequately prepare Romero to treat Ebola patients in a public hospital without becoming ill.

Similarly, last Friday, Republican members of the House Oversight Committee were appalled to hear Deborah Burger, co-president of National Nurses United, disclose the results of a survey of more than 3,000 nurses in more than 1,000 hospitals in every U.S. state and the District of Columbia. It found 68 percent say their hospital has not communicated to them any policy regarding potential admission of patients infected by Ebola, and 84 percent say their hospital has not provided education on Ebola.

Lucas wrote that Spanish voters are concerned public hospitals in Spain are not prepared to handle Ebola because the Rajoy government, faced with budget constraints, has imposed cuts on government health care services in an attempt not to cut social welfare programs benefiting the poor.

Lucas further noted Minister of Health Ana Mato discounted the possibility Ebola could come to Spain, much as President Obama and the Centers for Disease Control were slow to understand the risk Ebola c ould come to the United States.

For the moment, the political crisis in Spain has eased, largely because Romero, though still in hospital isolation, is recovering from the disease.

The Rajoy government has taken the usual steps of appointing a public commission to study the failure of the public health system, and the ministry of health has promised to take additional steps to equip and train public hospital staffs on the safe treatment of the disease.

"Today, Teresa Romero is healed, though still in hospital isolation," Lucas wrote, "allowing the Spanish government to breath a sigh of relief, as the current health emergency eases."