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CNN NEWSROOM

Ebola Worries; ISIS Fighters Enter Syrian City; President Obama Holds Town Hall Meeting

Aired October 3, 2014 - 15:00   ET

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


RANDI KAYE, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm Randi Kaye, in for Brooke Baldwin. Thanks so much for joining us.

In just a few minutes, President Obama is scheduled to hold a town hall discussion in Indiana. He could speak, we understand, about a variety of topics, including Ebola. We will bring that to you live.

Meanwhile, authorities in Dallas already dealing with Ebola. They are now monitoring 50 people who have been in contact with Ebola patient Thomas Duncan. Right now, hazmat teams are at the apartment where one of the biggest tasks is taking place, removing the sheets, the towels, and the other items that he may have contaminated.

There is an unimaginable amount of red tape involved in this entire operation.

Martin Savidge is at the apartment complex where hazmat teams have been all afternoon.

And, Martin, what is the latest on the cleanup process there?

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Randi, the hazmat teams have been on site now for a couple of hours. They are also being assisted by a private contractor that apparently is doing the cleanup work.

And we knew all of this was happening because you saw for the first time really evidence of hazmat officials coming on site. This is with the Dallas Fire Rescue. It was also with these very large trucks and emergency equipment, specialized personnel and then also the cleanup trucks as well.

What they have been doing now is sort of preparing to go in and begin the cleanup process. As part of that, you saw people suiting up, going to the apartment unit, dressed in what appeared to be hazmat kind of gear and they have also now just put up a black plastic sheet in front of the entrance or hallway entrance to the apartment itself.

That could be for privacy issues. It could be for cleaning issues because, remember, there are four people that have been quarantined inside of this apartment complex. And they have also completely taped up and sealed off an automobile in the parking lot, presumably an automobile that Thomas Duncan may have in some way rode in or came in contact with.

Those are the first stages of how they are trying to clean up the site this afternoon -- Randi.

KAYE: And what about the quarantined family members still inside that apartment? Are they going to be in there during this whole process or will they even stay there?

SAVIDGE: Well, we have sort of been getting a through-the-fence briefing from public information officials on site, and they have been telling us that they are communicating with Louise -- that's the woman who Anderson Cooper was speaking to -- talking to her on the telephone. This is all sort of being done via remote control.

Now that they are physically there, they're also I'm sure talking to her in person, but they are sort of telling her what to anticipate. And we're getting word they plan to remove those four occupants and then apparently take them somewhere else. We don't know exactly where.

There had been a very large public concern that if you are so worried about these four people having been so close to the Ebola patient, why are you housing them in the middle of a densely populated apartment complex? Authorities said because they showed no signs of symptoms, but clearly now maybe they are planning to move them for their own comfort, for their safety and for public calm.

KAYE: Yes, certainly. Martin Savidge, thank you very much for the update there from Dallas.

Right now, volunteer aid workers are rushing to help care for Ebola patients in West Africa. Volunteers will help staff hospitals or screen travelers or even help deliver some food. Their zeal is not deterred even after several American volunteers became infected with Ebola and had to be flown back to the U.S. for treatment.

What drives volunteers to battle a deadly virus in very faraway danger zones?

Joining me to discuss this, Joe DiCarlo. He's the vice president of programs at Medical Teams International.

Joe, your group has certainly been working in Liberia now for I think about 10 years or so. Tell me what inspires your team to go to these risky areas.

JOE DICARLO, MEDICAL TEAMS INTERNATIONAL: I think it's part of our mission to help the poorest in the world and those who are most vulnerable.

And so we're motivated to really be on the front lines of where people are in greatest need.

KAYE: And how do you explain to a volunteer, how do you explain to them the risks when they are considering a trip to an Ebola zone?

DICARLO: Well, first of all, we are very careful in getting the right information on how to stay safe and to protect staff and volunteers, whoever we send to the site. We're currently in Liberia, as you mentioned, and we're working very closely with the CDC, with the World Health Organization, and other international organizations to ensure safety and protection of our staff and volunteers.

KAYE: Let's talk about this Dallas patient, because he's accused of reportedly lying about coming into contact with an Ebola patient there in Liberia.

Do you think that the questionnaire that he had to answer before getting on a plane to the U.S., is that enough to keep those infected from traveling?

DICARLO: I think the important question is, what are we doing in order to stop the spread of Ebola?

And in Liberia, the information that we provide to communities, to home-based care, and to clinics is what is key to addressing this issue, so that the issue of whether someone is traveling and may be in isolation and Ebola -- may be in isolation or in incubation stage will be a moot issue, because we want to address the disease at the source.

KAYE: I know that you believe that we will see a few more Ebola cases here in the U.S. What is your feeling about this turning into a full- fledged outbreak?

DICARLO: I have full confidence in the U.S. health system. It's a robust system. We have the capacity in order to address infectious diseases much more than what's existing in West Africa.

So, I'm very confident in what we're told by infectious disease experts, that this will not become an issue in this country.

KAYE: And you in fact even worked on a program to keep people from traveling with infectious diseases like H1N1. How is Ebola different, do you think? Is it more pressing? Is it more concerning?

DICARLO: Ebola is new to West Africa, and so what it is pointing out is the lack of health infrastructure within West Africa.

And so what's concerning to us is the fact that we need to have health systems strengthening within the countries that have Ebola, so that they will be able to address the issues as they arise. This won't be the last time Ebola has erupted and will erupt in this area of the world, and this will hopefully provide an opportunity to improve their health system to deal with it in the future.

KAYE: Joe DiCarlo, be safe where you are. And we appreciate your time. Thank you.

DICARLO: Thank you so much.

KAYE: And any minute now, just a reminder, President Obama is scheduled to begin a town hall discussion on a variety of topics. He may discuss the Ebola case here in the United States and we will bring that to you live.

Next, Thomas Eric Duncan may have potentially exposed dozens of people to Ebola after a Dallas hospital initially sent him home, even though he told them that he just arrived from Liberia and was having Ebola- like symptoms. So, the big question, are hospitals around the U.S. prepared for the possible arrival of more Ebola patients? We will discuss.

Plus, ISIS fighters invade a town on the Syrian/Turkish border. Are we about to see a military response from Turkey?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAYE: One of the criticisms of the Texas hospital treating Ebola patient Thomas Duncan was that perhaps it was unprepared to handle someone with an infectious disease.

What's the proper protocol when patients show up and are U.S. hospitals ready and equipped to handle something like Ebola?

CNN's Drew Griffin takes a look at another Dallas area hospital's emergency preparedness plan.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DREW GRIFFIN, CNN INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's supposed to work like this. A sick patient enters the E.R., faces an intake clerk who immediately assesses the big question, if your symptoms match Ebola, where have you been?

Somewhere in that process at Texas Presbyterian, there was a breakdown. The Liberian man was sent home instead of placed here, inside a secure, separate isolation room where hospital staff could know for sure if the patient has Ebola.

Obviously, there was a misstep. What do you do at your hospital to make sure that the communication is flowing between the staff, the patient and everybody knows what is going on and do you rehearse this, do you drill this?

DR. JAMES D'ETIENNE, BAYLOR HOSPITAL EMERGENCY MEDICINE: We do. And part of that drill is general disaster preparedness and part of the drill is always gearing up when we know an infectious disease is heightened in our area, whether it is a flu, whether it's a respiratory virus, the screening process again starts in triage.

GRIFFIN: Dr. James D'Etienne at Baylor's emergency room says since the first of this year, this hospital, just miles from Texas Presbyterian, has trained its staff how to isolate a patient and protect itself through masks, gloves, protective clothing, and only entered through what's called the warm room, until test results can determine exactly what is wrong.

And that's what this is -- this is not being used by anybody else, this is not an overflow room. This is an isolation room specifically for any kind of in infectious disease, Ebola included?

D'ETIENNE: Correct. And we have more than one of these rooms and we can use them in day-to-day operations. GRIFFIN: D'Etienne says his hospital is ready, but infectious disease

experts say this level of readiness across the U.S. is only now being addressed.

GAVIN MACGREGOR-SKINNER, ELIZABETH R. GRIFFIN RESEARCH FOUNDATION: We've seen that hospitals now are downloading paper-based guidance plans from the Internet and working out how to do the management, how to do the implementation and how is the how, how to make she's things happen to make sure if they do get an Ebola patient, everyone in the hospital is going to be safe.

GRIFFIN: And it's not just hospitals that need to improve their response. This December 2013 study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Trust for America found a majority of states scored poorly in their ability to control infectious diseases.

The study's executive director quoted as saying, "The bad news is that we found major gaps in the country's ability to prevent and control and treat outbreaks, leaving Americans at an unacceptable level of unnecessary risk." The report calls for more uniform vaccinations, better health monitoring and much better communication between hospitals who possibly have infectious patients and the health officials who can stop those infections from spreading.

Drew Griffin, CNN, Dallas.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAYE: And joining me now is an infectious diseases and public health specialist Dr. Celine Gounder. She wrote an article about why high- tech medicine alone cannot protect the U.S. from Ebola.

Dr. Gounder, in your article, you talked about how important it is to get the basics right. What do you mean by the basics?

DR. CELINE GOUNDER, INFECTIOUS DISEASES AND PUBLIC HEALTH SPECIALIST: Well, one of the most common causes of medical errors in this country is communication. And some people are blaming these electronic medical records as being the problem here.

That's a way of recording information, but it's not communication in and of itself. And, unfortunately, what really should have happened is the nurse should have said to the physicians, I'm really worried here. I'm concerned this patient could have Ebola.

And that didn't happen.

KAYE: Instead of putting it into a computer, there needs to be more of a face-to-face.

GOUNDER: There has to be face-to-face communication.

KAYE: Discussion.

What should hospitals do though to gear up for treating infectious disease? GOUNDER: Well, one problem that we have seen in the last couple of

years is hospital preparedness funding has been cut by a third. At the same time, CDC funding has been cut by hundreds of millions of dollars. State and local health departments have lost 20 percent of their staff due to budget cuts.

While we do have hospitals that are very high-tech that have the protective gear and the isolation rooms, there's some very basic things that we have had to cut due to funding crunches. That said, staff really need to be on the alert, asking systematically every patient, sort of like a checklist that a pilot on a plane would use to make sure they don't miss anything.

Patients need to be asked systematically about their travel history, have they been in contact with anybody sick? And just asking have you been in contact with somebody with Ebola may not be enough. You may have to ask, have you been in contact with someone who had fever, vomiting, diarrhea, that sort of thing?

KAYE: Right.

Meanwhile, though, the hospital techs that sent this guy home, Duncan home, what were some of the other protocol missteps that you see happening there?

GOUNDER: Well, I really think in this case an infectious disease expert should have been called to at least weigh in on whether it was safe to send the patient home.

It's also interesting they sent him home with an antibiotics for a viral illness. Antibiotics had no role here.

KAYE: Right.

GOUNDER: In fact, you're creating more problems by doing that.

And that's actually a growing problem with infectious disease training. We're not able to fill training slots because it's a specialty that is not well enough paid. And we're putting ourselves into a situation where there's not going to be enough trained people to respond to these problems in the future.

KAYE: Are you concerned that hospitals here in the U.S. aren't equipped at all to handle an Ebola-like virus?

GOUNDER: I think we're equipped with technology and the supplies. I think our staff need to be better prepared and more alert to these problems and be ready to communicate with one another and with providers at public health departments and elsewhere to make sure the right thing is done.

KAYE: All right, Dr. Gounder, appreciate your time and your expertise in this area. Thank you.

GOUNDER: Thank you. KAYE: Meanwhile, ISIS fighters edging closer to Turkey's border. Is

the terror group trying to force Turkey to take military action? We are going to discuss that coming your way next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAYE: Welcome back, everyone.

As we have been telling you, waiting for the president to speak.

President Obama now holding a town hall discussion at this hour. He's speaking at a steel mill in Princeton, Indiana.

So, let's just listen in here for a bit.

(JOINED IN PROGRESS)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Now, that happens to be the longest uninterrupted stretch of job growth in the private sector in American history.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: And all told -- all told, the United States has put more folks back to work than Europe, Japan, and all other advanced economies combined. All of them combined, we put more folks back to work right here in the United States of America.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: So, this progress that we have been making, it's been hard. It goes in fits and starts. It's not always been perfectly smooth or as fast as we want, but it is real and it is steady and it is happening.

And it's making a difference in economies all across the country. And it's the direct result of the best workers in the world, the drive and determination of the American people, the resilience of the American people bouncing back from what was the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

And it has also got a little bit to do with some decisions we made pretty early on in my administration. So, just to take an example, many of you know that the auto industry was really in a bad spot when I came into office. And we decided to help our automakers to rebuild, to retool.

And they're now selling new cars at the fastest rate in about eight years. And they're great cars too.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: And that's helped a lot of communities all across the Midwest.

And that's just one example of what's been happening to American manufacturing generally. About 10, 15 years ago, everybody said, American manufacturing is going downhill. Everything is moving to China or other countries.

And the Midwest got hit a lot harder than a lot of places because we were the backbone of American manufacturing. But because folks invested in new plants and new technologies and there were hubs that were created between businesses and universities and community colleges, so that workers could master and get trained in some of these new technologies, what we have now seen is manufacturing driving economic growth in a way we haven't seen in about 20, 25 years.

Because of the efforts that we have made, manufacturing as a whole has added about 700,000 new jobs. It's growing twice as fast as the rest of the economy. New factories are opening their doors. More than half of manufacturing executives have said they are actively looking to bring jobs back from China.

Our businesses are selling more goods overseas than any time in our history. And the reason this is important is not just because of some abstract statistic. Manufacturing jobs have good pay and good benefits. And they create a ripple effect to the whole economy, because everybody who is working here at Millennium Steel, because you are getting paid well, because you got decent benefits, that means that the restaurants in the neighborhood are doing better.

It means you can afford to make your mortgage payments and buy a new car yourself and buy some new appliances. And you get a virtuous cycle in which all businesses are doing better. To most middle-class folks, the last decade was defined by those jobs going overseas.

But if we keep up these investments, then we can define this decade as a period, instead of outsourcing, insourcing, bringing jobs back to America.

And when you ask business executives around the world what's the number one place to invest their money right now, for a long time, it was China. Today, they say the best place to invest money is here in the United States of America, here in the United States of America.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: So there is good stuff happening in the economy right now.

But what we all is, is that there are still some challenges. There are still some challenges, because there's still a lot of families where somebody in the family is out of work or isn't getting as many hours as they want. There are still a lot of folks who at the end of the month are having trouble paying the bills.

And wages and incomes have not moved up as fast as all the gains we're making in jobs and productivity. Too much of the growth in income and wealth is going to the top. Not enough of it is being spread to the ordinary worker.

KAYE: All right, you have been listening there to President Obama speaking in Princeton, Indiana.

Let me bring in senior White House correspondent Jim Acosta, who is there as well.

Certainly, Jim, highlighting some of the good news about the economy there.

JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely.

And that's something that this White House has not been able to do at all times during this administration, Randi, as you know. But, today, with jobs report coming out showing the unemployment rate down to 5.9 percent, it hasn't been that low since July 2008, and some 248,000 jobs created, the president is taking something of a victory lap this afternoon.

You heard him there in that factory in Indiana saying that, yes, this has a lot to do with the hardworking Americans who are out there fueling this recovery, but he also said it also has something to do with some of the policies that were enacted at the early part of his administration, so the president trying to take some credit there.

And this is really a midterm campaign kickoff for this president, who may not be out on the campaign trail very much with other Democratic candidates, but he will be doing events like this. And one thing that we heard this week, Randi, he was in Chicago yesterday saying that his policies, his policies from his administration are on the ballot this fall.

The president wants to take credit for this economic recovery, but very quickly, just to show you that Republicans also saw an opportunity in those comments from the president, they quickly turned those comments into campaign ads in Kansas and in Kentucky and a Web video and New Hampshire.

And so this is really setting the stage for what will be a very hard- fought midterm election campaign. And this White House would like that to be on the economy. They may not get that because of so much that's going on right now with ISIS and Ebola. Senior administration officials are having a briefing on that at 4:30 this afternoon, just to show that they are on top of Ebola.

KAYE: Yes.

ACOSTA: But, clearly, a lot on the president's plate and he wanted to at least put some of that to the side for an afternoon and talk about this economy, which is doing much better, Randi.

KAYE: It certainly is. Jim Acosta, thank you very much.

And, of course, for the folks at home, we will continue to watch this. We will continue to monitor what the president is saying, and certainly when he gets to some questions and answers there, in case he does mention Ebola, we will bring that to you as well, and, of course, that 4:30 news press conference as well.

All right, coming up, ISIS fighters invade a town on the Syrian- Turkish border. Are we about to see a military response from Turkey?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)