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SANJAY GUPTA MD

How Ebola Got Out of Control; ER Doctors in Gaza Struggle to Care for Steady Stream of Horrific Injuries; Interview with Congressman Scott Perry of Pennsylvania

Aired August 10, 2014 - 07:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN HOST: While they came later than many expected, the World Health Organization now finally and officially declaring Ebola a public health emergency, and also admitting the virus is spreading faster than they can control it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. MARGARET CHAN, WHO DIRECTOR GENERAL: I am declaring the current outbreak of Ebola virus disease a public health emergency of international concern.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GUPTA: WHO saying this is the largest outbreak ever of the virus. The State Department now ordering families of embassy staffers in Liberia to leave, as this epidemic does continue to spread. Now, in a few minutes I'm going to try to answer some of your questions about the risk for example of getting Ebola, and also how to keep your family safe.

But first, a quick look at how this deadly outbreak got so out of control.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KEN ISAACS, VICE PRESIDENT, SAMARITAN'S PURSE: The international response to the disease has been a failure.

GUPTA (voice-over): Blunt words and they were just getting warmed up.

REP. CHRIS SMITH (R-NJ), CHAIRMAN, FOREIGN AFFAIRS SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA: Many people are not cooperating with efforts to contain the disease.

GUPTA: The House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee, calling an emergency recess hearing on the Ebola outbreak.

REP. FRANK WOLF (R-VA), FOREIGN AFFAIRS SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA: There was little action to take to get out in front of this problem. And now, we're seeing the consequences.

GUPTA: The largest Ebola outbreak in history. More and more countries involved. When I travelled to these remote villages, I knew the numbers were going to be almost impossible to determine. But officially, nearly 1,000 people dead and twice that number infected, including two Americans who were brought back to the United States. Not an easy decision for the chief infectious disease doctor for the country.

DR. THOMAS FRIEDEN, CDC DIRECTOR: What's so concerning about Ebola is that the stakes are so high, that a single lapse in standard infection control could be fatal.

GUPTA: I want to show you just how quickly an infection can spread.

So, here's a real world example from Ebola outbreak in the early 2000s. A woman in Uganda didn't know she was sick with Ebola. She was in close contact with six people. Her baby and father-in-law, they both got sick. The baby then got his grandmother sick, and she had contact with two more people as well.

The father-in-law had close contact with 12 people. Out of that his brother and cousin, both got sick. The brother then had close contact with four more people, and the cousin had close contact with five more people, including another brother who used his blanket and also got sick.

FRIEDEN: If you leave behind even a single burning ember, it's like a forest fire, it flares back up.

GUPTA: And that's why breaking the chain is essential to stopping the epidemic.

FRIEDEN: We do know how to stop Ebola -- meticulous case finding, isolation, and contact tracing and management.

GUPTA: But what about treatment for those who do get sick?

Congressional leaders grilled Dr. Frieden specifically about the experimental drug ZMapp. It had never been used on a human before, just animals.

Representative Bass wanted to know, why did just two Americans with Ebola receive the serum, with so many Africans so sick?

REP. KAREN BASS (D-CA), FOREIGN AFFAIRS SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA: I would like you to talk about that that there's concern that we have access to this and are not providing that access.

GUPTA: Dr. Frieden took a pass on that one.

FRIEDEN: I really would need to refer you to the National Institutes of Health, which would be the lead on developing new treatments and vaccines against Ebola.

GUPTA: Ken Isaacs testified on behalf of Samaritan's Purse, where both Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol were working when they got infected. He disclosed that the National Institutes of Health knew about the experimental treatment from the start and testified that it had worked for both Brantly and Writebol. ISAACS: That medicine was administered after it was brought to us by

the NIH people. And there was improvement. They seem to have gotten better.

GUPTA: One point of agreement, aside from Brantly and Writebol, Ebola can make its way to the United States through others.

FRIEDEN: Inevitably, there will be travelers, American citizens and others, who go from these countries, who are from Lagos, if it doesn't get it under control, and are here with symptoms.

GUPTA: Thursday's hearing was to make sure we are ready.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GUPTA: Now, the reason people are so alarmed about this particular outbreak is because it's never before spread so widely, it was typically confined to these remote forested areas in Central Africa. But now, it's within a stone's throw of an international airport. It's been on the move.

You know, I hear from a lot of you on social media, wanting the truth about what this all means from you right here at home. And you just heard the CDC director say, it's inevitable that additional cases of Ebola will come to the United States. But he also said it's not going to lead to an outbreak here, it's important.

And why is that? Because simply put, the United States hospitals are more equipped to isolate and provide better treatment. What we have in place is it a stark contrast to the situation I saw while reporting on this case in Guinea.

It's also the opposite of what CNN's David McKenzie witnessed this week in Sierra Leone.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID MCKENZIE, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Taking incredible care to combat an unprecedented outbreak.

STEFAN KRUGER, MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES: Gloves.

MCKENZIE: Ebola can lead to death with just one drop of infected fluids.

KRUGER: So, that's why we take every possible proportion to prevent that.

MCKENZIE: Already, dozens of doctors and nurses have died in this outbreak. Still, Dr. Stefan Kruger says he had to come.

KRUGER: I really just think this is where they need us. And there's a really big lack of resources and at the moment, the truth is in Kailahun (INAUDIBLE) there'd be nothing. For me, that's a good enough reason. MCKENZIE: But at Kailahun, they are losing the battle. Ebola has hit four countries, the numbers of infections continue to rise, and this outbreak is out of control.

(on camera): In the last two weeks, they've doubled their capacity here for confirmed Ebola patients. And they're doing all they can to help those who are sick. But they are absolutely at capacity here.

Will the level of effort that it is right now stop this disease?

ANJA WOLZ, MEDICINS SANS FRONTIERES: No. To be up here? No. And it's really difficult because we are warning behind the outbreak. We don't where we are staying and it's really not -- it was waiting for us because we don't have a capacity to go everywhere.

MCKENZIE (voice-over): But here, they do what they can. In the high risk zone, this woman calls out for help. She has Ebola, so does her son.

"Ebola is so deadly, it's killing our citizens, it's killing our country", says Tenneh Naloh. Her husband and son died of the disease. Seventy percent of confirmed cases here will die too.

(on camera): So, she's confident.

(voice-over): To talk to Tenneh, we must stand a few feet away. The street protocols protect us. The cruelty is they isolate her. Still, Tenneh believes her 12-year old daughter has not who will make it and so will she.

"We are feeling much better," she says. "We are strong and we're going to fight."

(on camera): What happens when we actually beat this disease?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. I mean, that's a real highlight of everything that we do here. Everybody comes to watch the patient come out of isolation. It really I think it be able to stop (ph) to continue doing that for (INAUDIBLE).

MCKENZIE (voice-over): David McKenzie, CNN, Kailahun, Sierra Leone.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GUPTA: David, thanks so much.

Just incredible reporting, very proud of David.

From the Ebola outbreak in to the Middle East. Up next, we've got this incredible look inside an emergency room in Gaza. We're going to meet the doctors and the nurses who struggled to take care of victims of the seemingly never ending Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) GUPTA: Eyes on the Middle East and Gaza today. Even if peace does take hold, the damage from the latest fighting is going to be tough to repair. And something's lost can never be regained. You know, I've been in war zone hospitals all over the world. And the stories of patients and the health care teams that risk their lives to save them are extraordinary.

Couple weeks ago, CNN's Karl Penhaul took us inside one of them and showed us the struggle to keep up with the stream of desperation that kept rolling in the door.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KARL PENHAUL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Dead on arrival, the horror, civilians and medics at breaking point.

DR. SHADI AL-QADI, GAZA EUROPEAN HOSPITAL: We feel exhausted. We feel (INAUDIBLE). We feel depressed.

PENHAUL: No time to rest. It's a scramble to rescue survivors. Surgeons told us not to film this casualty, a hint, perhaps, he was a militant fighter. But most on the operating table at south Gaza's European Hospital are clearly noncombatants.

(on camera): Their patient is a 23-year-old female, and they have showed me on the X-rays she has a basic fracture on her leg.

(voice-over): They say that was caused by a rocket blast. The surgeons' focus, the blink of a patient's eye, the beep of vital signs. Dr. Hasan (ph) is sick of it -- sick, he tells me, of stitching bodies mutilated by shrapnel, sick of war.

DR. YOUSIF AL-AKRAD, GAZA EUROPEAN HOSPITAL: We have received 61 patients, injured patients. So, we don't have enough (INAUDIBLE) for those patients. What about if we will receive more?

PENHAUL: Down the hallway, surgeons patch up a toddler. They say the rest of his family is dead.

Bone and brain surgeons do skin grafts. Fighting rages close to the hospital. They just can't transfer him to a plastic surgeon. Medicine and supplies are running low.

HASSAN KHALED YOUNIS, GAZA EUROPEAN HOSPITAL: If the war is still one more week or more than this, we will reach to -- we don't have (INAUDIBLE) enough for the injured.

PENHAUL: The fight for Gaza has become a dirty war, no sanctuary for innocent.

DR. HASSEM AL-MASRI, GAZA EUROPEAN HOSPITAL: The situation is very dangerous. No place in Gaza Strip, not even one square meter is safe in Gaza Strip.

PENHAUL: Dr. Al-Masri is afraid that he like others could be killed at any time, so he carries his I.D. everywhere. (on camera): So you're preparing for death as well?

AL-MASRI: Yes, we are preparing ourself for death.

PENHAUL (voice-over): Men dazed with amputated limbs, a child with head trauma battling to get up. Many medics tell me only faith can keep them on their feet.

DR. JAMAL ABU HILAL, GAZA EUROPEAN HOSPITAL: Got to give our -- the power to work to work, even we work sometimes 20 hours continuous.

PENHAUL: But even the call of God drowned out by the agony.

Karl Penhaul, CNN, Gaza.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GUPTA: Again, that was a couple weeks ago, but it's a perspective. A medical perspective that I hope doesn't get lost in all of this, we do know the hospitals that you just saw is still up and running. Thanks to Karl Penhaul.

Up next, we're shifting gears. Many people thought this was never going to happen in their lifetimes, a federal law introduced in Congress to legalize some types of marijuana.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GUPTA (voice-over): You've seen the labels, gluten free, but what does that really mean? First things first, gluten is a protein found in wheat and other grains in foods like pasta and bread. For the 3 million Americans with celiac disease, it can be a real problem.

DR. LARRY SPERLING, EMORY UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE: Celiac is a disease of inflammation of the intestines, it can produce intestinal like symptoms, upset stomach --

GUPTA: Believe it or not, up until this week, there were no regulations behind the label. But starting this week, the FDA will only allow foods to be labeled gluten-free if they have less than 20 parts per million of gluten. That's the threshold that doctors believe those with celiac disease can tolerate.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GUPTA: You know, it used to be a fringe issue, but as we head into an election season. Congress is looking at proposals to loosened federal laws against medical marijuana. Now, one new bill would legalize a treatment that I've been reporting on quite a bit. It's cannabis oil to treat seizures. I want to give you an example of the complex chemistry that's inside this plant.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) GUPTA (voice-over): Let's talk about marijuana and your brain. It's a rather complicated process, so let's start off with what's familiar to you. THC.

THC is the chemical in weed that gets you high. You feel light- headed, feel giddy, sometimes relaxed. Marijuana you can smoke it, you can eat it in an extract (ph) of food, you can inhale it with a vapor pen, of course, consume it in an oil form. It's especially good for little kids who are taking it as a medicine.

No matter the method, THC goes through your bloodstream and into your brain. And there the THC is going to latch on to these special receptors. When they are stimulated, they release dopamine that sends signals to various nerve cells all around your body and makes the user feel high.

Not all cannabis is going to get you stoned. That's because marijuana contains another chemical known as CBD. That's cannabidiol.

Marijuana plants that have low THC and high CBD can work really well as a medicine. They can treat things like epilepsy. It works because the CBD chemical can quiet excessive electrical and chemical activity in the brain.

I know this 3-year-old girl who went from having 300 seizures a week to two per month after her parents gave her cannabis with high levels of CBD.

When it comes to marijuana, there's some 500 different chemical compounds. All these compounds work together. It's something known as the entourage effect. That's important because you can't just take a chemical out of marijuana and make a medicine. You need the whole plant, especially when it comes to using pot instead of pills.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GUPTA: And joining me now from Washington is Congressman Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, who introduced what he calls the Charlotte's Web Medical Hemp Act. It would take some of these strains that are used to treat seizures and make them legal under federal law.

Congressman, thanks for joining us. Welcome to the program.

REP. SCOTT PERRY (R), PENNSYLVANIA: Thank you very much, Dr. Gupta. Great to be here.

GUPTA: Thank you.

So, let me just start by simply asking, why are you doing this? What prompted this?

PERRY: Well, I had some families come into the office, just set up an office visit and they came in to see me, I heard their story, and I'll tell you, I think when I went back to my staff and said, look, we have to fix this, they kind of looked at me like, medical marijuana? I said, yes, the federal government is in the way of treatment for these little kids, I feel like I have -- this is my duty, this is a duty to fix this, so I said, figure a way out. Let's figure a way to do this, and we were working on it since last October and finally think we've arrived in a solution.

GUPTA: And one of things I should point out, I know you know it as well, Congressman, but there are states out there that do have medical marijuana laws.

PERRY: Sure.

GUPTA: But not at the federal level. And you run into these crazy situations sometimes where people are taking the medicine in one state, but can't take the medicine back to their home states. They could be arrested for drug trafficking. That's the real concern for these people.

What you're proposing would help eliminate some of that as well?

PERRY: That is the plan. Literally, the families that I spoke with, of course, I live in Pennsylvania, said they were considering moving at least a portion of the family, of course, the afflicted child and one parent to Colorado so that they could avail themselves to the CBD, literally making them refugees.

Well, I thought, this is America, that's absurd, why would we encourage the breakup of the family, put these people in peril for something that doesn't make you high? You know, so, what we wanted to do is remove the federal barrier so that they could avail themselves to the treatment. And so, there would be no excuse for the states to stay, look, we're not going to do this because there's a federal prohibition that still exist. If we remove that federal prohibition, then the states can allow the importation into their state, if they choose to, or allow the production in their own state and regulate it, just like many states, most states, all states -- regulate alcohol, same thing.

GUPTA: I'm curious, Congressman -- and I'm not a politician, but let me ask this. Politically, how challenging was this for you. I wonder if this issue is just not a winning issue, it could be a losing issue for a politician, but not a winning issue. Did you -- did you consider that?

PERRY: I'll tell you. If you were to ask me five years ago, three years ago, hey, you know, you're going to be the champion for CBD, for medical marijuana, I would have said, you're probably crazy. I've never been for recreational drug use or extracurricular drug use, but I will tell you I really didn't think about, you know, whether it's politically viable if this problematic for me. I looked at these families, I said, this is my job, I ran for this office, we have a duty, the federal government is standing in the way of their treatment. We need to break down this barrier and allow them to treat their children, keep their family together.

So, in a way, I think that's why my staff looked at me, like are you crazy? I feel like this is important, and we need to be doing this?

GUPTA: Yes, it can work when nothing else has worked. And it's amazing.

PERRY: Right, right.

GUPTA: Congressman, thanks again. Appreciate it.

PERRY: Thank you very much.

GUPTA: Also, when we come back, I've been fascinated by how we have responded to all this news about Ebola, the fear, the near hysteria at times, where does this all come from? And why do so many people share it?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GUPTA: The number one excuse for not exercising is, I don't have time. But a lot of people also tell me, that exercise is boring.

I get it. Sometimes I'll focus on a specific problem during a run, letting my mind mull it over. I also love using technology, to see if I'm getting better at my runs or just older and slower.

A San Francisco runner Claire Wyckoff does something I hadn't seen before, she uses the GPS on her Nike running app to draw aliens from Atari game space invaders. Take a look there.

One morning, she decided to run Slimer from "Ghostbusters". Check out her first attempt at running a corgi. Pretty impressive. I would be remiss if I didn't tell you that a lot of the drawings that she sent us, we simply can't show you on television.

Add something extra to your exercise and be far more likely to do it on a regular basis.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GUPTA: Before we go, you know, we talked a lot about Ebola this week, and there's been a lot of fear, I saw tweets that wondered allowed if Ebola was going to wipe us out or if this was the big one. No doubt they are referring to a terrible menacing pandemic. The answer is no, by the way, to both those things. But it's easy to see where the fear comes from.

Like in the movie "Outbreak", a terrifying disease comes from some remote part of the world, takes hold and threatens all of mankind. That story line has become such a part of our collective consciousness that we almost expect it, even if there is no science, no rational, no logic to back that up.

Make no mistake: there is a virus out there that kills a lot of people. It's known for stealing away babies, pregnant women and people who have finished a lifetime of work and are ready to enjoy a lifetime of retirement. Those are the people most likely to succumb to this illness. The symptoms are headache, bodyache, successive fatigue, and tens of thousands of people die from it in the United States alone. But what I'm describing is the common flu, not Ebola -- something not so scary, right? Because we understand it. Information is power. And also, remember, we do have a vaccine for the flu.

One day, we may have a pandemic that plays out like a movie. But thankfully, it's not Ebola, and it's not now. Hope that helps ease your mind a little bit.

Time now, though, to get you back in the "CNN NEWSROOM" with Brooke Baldwin.