GOP health expert: NYC can’t handle Ebola

Former New York Lieutenant Gov. Betsy McCaughey (R) raised concerns over the first Ebola diagnosis in New York.

“Our hospitals aren’t ready for Ebola,” she told radio host John Catsimatidis in a Sunday interview on New York’s 970 AM. “Hospitals that can’t stop staph and C. diff, and other common infections that are raging through their hallways, cannot control Ebola.”

{mosads}McCaughey pointed to the two nurses at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital who contracted the deadly virus while caring for the first Ebola patient diagnosed with the disease in the U.S., as evidence that health workers are at greater risk in the most populous U.S. city.

“Most Americans have no risk of contracting Ebola,” said the chairwoman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths and a senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research. “But healthcare workers or doctors and nurses are at risk.” 

McCaughey went on to criticize Doctors Without Borders; Dr. Craig Spencer, the New York Ebola patient was working for the group at an Ebola treatment center in Guinea, when he contracted the disease.

Spencer tested positive for Ebola on Thursday, one week after returning from West Africa. 

McCaughey said the group doesn’t isolate medical staff in Ebola-ravaged countries or before they board commercial flights back to the U.S.

“There should be a period of time when [the organization’s medical professionals] have to wait and demonstrate that they haven’t become infected before they get on an airplane.”