U.S. health experts are following concerns of an Ebola outbreak in Africa closely and said a number of medical countermeasures have already been deployed, according to an article on the Fierce Healthcare website.
"Obviously given our prior experience, we are on very high alert," Anthony Fauci, M.D., head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in the article.
"There are factors that mitigate against their having the same situation as we saw in West Africa, but there are also some factors that might favor that," Fauci said while testifying in front of a Senate Appropriations subcommittee. The first cases of Ebola were reported in early May in a remote area of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. But at least one case is now in a more populated area.
U.S. health officials are working with the World Health Organization to ship countermeasures the agency worked on during the last Ebola outbreak a few years ago.