WASHINGTON: Top US health officials faced a grilling on Thursday by lawmakers infuriated over the nation’s fumbling response to the Ebola outbreak, as the Obama administration scrambles to contain the disease’s spread.

Centres for Disease Control (CDC) director Thomas Frieden has become the most prominent target of the criticism, which has mounted as it emerged that a second Texas health care worker infected with the deadly disease was allowed to board a commercial flight despite reporting a low-grade fever.

Some lawmakers have demanded Frieden’s resignation and others have accused President Barack Obama of a lack of leadership.

Congressional leaders meanwhile are urging a travel ban to the United States on all citizens of the three West African nations hardest hit by the epidemic: Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

“The stakes in this battle couldn’t be any higher,” Tim Murphy, who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight, told a packed hearing with Frieden and other health experts.

“The trust and credibility of the administration and government are waning as the American public loses confidence each day with demonstrated failures of the current strategy,” he added.

Murphy, echoing other senior lawmakers like House Speaker John Boehner and Senator Marco Rubio, said he had “ongoing concern that administration officials still refuse to consider any travel restrictions” on people from West Africa entering the United States.

Some experts and lawmakers warned that isolating West Africa could further strain its health care resources.

Frieden and other officials acknowledged they still did not know how two Dallas nurses who treated a sick man contracted the virus, highlighting concerns about the government’s ability to prevent its spread. But Frieden insisted authorities could keep the hemorrhagic virus at bay in America.

“We remain confident that Ebola is not a significant public health threat to the United States,” he told the panel. “It is not transmitted easily, and it does not spread from people who are not ill”. That statement offered little consolation to worried lawmakers.

“People are scared. We need all hands on deck. We need a strategy,” House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Fred Upton warned. “People’s lives are at stake, and the response so far has been unacceptable”. But some warned of the dangers of sparking hysteria among the public.

“We need to put all of this in perspective, and not panic,” House Democrat Henry Waxman told the panel. The White House stressed that Obama, who cancelled political events Wednesday and Thursday in order to coordinate the US Ebola response, maintained confidence in Frieden.

Published in Dawn, October 17th, 2014