U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin Statement on U.S. Response to Ebola

“The outbreak of Ebola in West Africa demands a global response and while America is providing strong leadership abroad the international community needs to do more to fight this health crisis.

“I support continuing strong and enhanced screening at our US International airports to prevent the virus from being carried into the country.

“The confirmed cases in the United States have created a great deal of public anxiety which is why we need a more robust and coordinated response to effectively contain and eliminate the risk of this becoming a larger threat.

“I have confidence in the CDC’s ability to respond to the virus in the United States but at this time it’s clear that we need to take additional steps to protect Americans here at home. The CDC needs to be working with every hospital in the U.S. to implement Ebola emergency preparedness plans and making sure that our front line health care workers have the education, training, equipment and resources they need to adequately respond to and treat patients with Ebola symptoms. For future cases, we should deploy rapid response teams to work with local hospitals, consider treating patients at our specialized hospitals and biocontainment facilities, and increase our treatment capacity at these national facilities.”