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Ebola Czar Named by Obama

by Kathy Jones on Oct 18 2014 4:10 PM

 Ebola Czar Named by Obama
Attorney Ron Klain has been named by US President Barack Obama on Friday to coordinate the US response to the Ebola outbreak.
A White House official said the longtime Democratic aide would ensure that "efforts to protect the American people by detecting, isolating and treating Ebola patients in this country are properly integrated but don't distract from the aggressive commitment to stopping Ebola at the source in West Africa."

The new "Ebola czar" will report directly to Obama's Homeland Security Advisor Lisa Monaco and National Security Advisor Susan Rice.

"Monaco, Rice and others have done outstanding work in confronting this challenge so far ? but given their management of other national and homeland security priorities, additional bandwidth will further enhance the government's Ebola response," the White House official said.

Klain, a former senior White House aide to Obama and chief of staff to Vice President Joe Biden and former vice president Al Gore, currently heads Case Holdings -- a holding company founded by former AOL chief executive Steve Case -- and is general counsel at technology-oriented venture capital firm Revolution LLC.

A Liberian man died from the disease in Texas on October 8 and two American nurses who treated him have also tested positive for a disease that had already killed nearly 4,500 people as of Sunday, most of them in hard-hit Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

The nurses' infection embarrassed US health authorities, who faced questioning about how the disease, which kills around 70 percent of those it infects in West Africa, had spread.

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Source-AFP


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