The New York Times reported today that New York’s Mayor Bill de Blasio has called Dr. Craig Spencer a hero at a news conference held at Bellevue Hospital Center, where the doctor was successfully treated for Ebola after returning from Guinea as a medical volunteer.
“It is a good feeling to hug a hero. And we have a hero in our midst.”- de Blasio said.
Craig Spencer is the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in New York City and served as a volunteer with Doctors Without Borders in Guinea. He was successfully treated with a combination of experimental drugs and serum from another Ebola-recovered patient, Nancy Writebol.
Dr. Spencer’s initial diagnosis with Ebola set off intense public debate on the need to quarantine travellers and health workers returning from Ebola hotspots.
New York City's Ebola incident led the governors of New York, New Jersey, Maine and other US states to institute mandatory quarantining of high risk travelers despite warnings from the federal government and experts that the quarantines will serve to discourage volunteers from helping in West Africa.
US President Barack Obama has said that additional screening at airports and vigilant public health response measures should be sufficient to keep the risk of an Ebola outbreak in the US “very low”.