PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA has tried to stem the fear of Ebola in the US, saying that people must be guided by science — not fear — as it responds to virus.
In his weekly radio and Internet address, Obama says he was proud to give Texas nurse Nina Pham a hug in the Oval Office after she was cured of Ebola. He says the other nurse who contracted Ebola is also improving.
Nina Pham got a hug from President Barack Obama in the Oval Office at the White House. yesterday.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest called the meeting with Obama “an opportunity for the president to thank her for her service.”
But the close contact between the president and the former patient also came as officials in New York tried to calm fears after a doctor was diagnosed with Ebola in that city.
Pham said she felt “fortunate and blessed to be standing here today,” as she left the National Institutes of Health’s Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, where she had been since she arrived on 16 October from Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas.
Pham thanked her health care teams in Dallas and at the NIH and singled out fellow Ebola survivor Dr. Kent Brantly, who recovered after becoming infected in Liberia, for donating plasma containing Ebola-fighting antibodies as part of her care.
“Although I no longer have Ebola, I know it may be a while before I have my strength back,” Pham said at a news conference.
Pham is one of two nurses in Dallas who became infected with Ebola while treating Thomas Eric Duncan, who traveled to the United States from Liberia and died of the virus 8 October. The second nurse, Amber Vinson, is being treated at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, which on Friday issued a statement saying she “is making good progress” and that tests no longer detect virus in her blood.
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