Washington, United States:
US President Barack Obama on Wednesday pledged a "much
more aggressive" response at home to the Ebola threat, and insisted that
the risk of a serious outbreak on US soil was low.
After a
crisis meeting with top aides at the White House, Obama underlined the
importance of helping African countries stem the spread of the virus,
calling such aid "an investment in our own public health."
"If we
are not responding internationally in an effective way... then we could
have problems," Obama said in comments aired on US television.
The
meeting -- attended by Vice President Joe Biden, Defense Secretary
Chuck Hagel, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell and
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, among others -- came after a
second US Ebola infection was diagnosed at a Texas hospital where a
Liberian man died a week ago.
Obama
said meeting participants discussed "monitoring, supervising,
overseeing in a much more aggressive way exactly what's taking place in
Dallas" to ensure those lessons are "transmitted to hospitals and
clinics all across the country."
"This is not a situation in
which, like a flu, the risks of a rapid spread of the disease are
imminent," Obama said, adding he "shook hands with, hugged and kissed"
nurses who had treated an Ebola patient at Emory University hospital in
Atlanta.
"They followed the protocols. They knew what they were doing and I felt perfectly safe doing so," he said.
"I
am absolutely confident that we can prevent a serious outbreak of the
disease here in the United States... The key thing to understand about
this disease is that these protocols work."
The White House said
Obama had canceled plans to visit Rhode Island and New York on Thursday
so he could follow up on the Ebola meeting.
So far, Ebola has
killed nearly 4,500 people, the vast majority of them in West Africa,
where the outbreak began early this year.
Since the announcement
last month that the United States would send at least 3,000 troops to
West Africa to help fight the outbreak, Obama has repeatedly criticized
the international response to the health crisis as insufficient.
Story First Published: October 16, 2014 08:09 IST
