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As a second healthcare worker at Dallas’ Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital tests positive for Ebola after caring for patient Thomas Eric Duncan, the Centers for Disease Control has identified what it calls a "large group" of other workers who may still be at risk. Ebola patients are also being treated at the Nebraska Medical Center and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, but so far no workers there have contracted the virus. This comes as the country’s largest nurses union, National Nurses United, says hospitals across the country are largely unready to take in Ebola patients and have failed to adequately train healthcare workers and provide necessary protective gear. In a conference call Tuesday, the union’s co-president Deborah Burger said nurses at the Dallas hospital described having to use medical tape to secure openings in their flimsy garments, and were worried that their necks and heads were exposed as they cared for a patient with explosive diarrhea and projectile vomiting. We are joined by the co-president of National Nurses United, Karen Higgins, who works as an intensive care unit nurse in Boston, and hear from Democracy Now! co-host Juan González, who reports on the nurses’ concerns in his latest column for the New York Daily News.
Image Credit: National Nurses United
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We begin today’s show looking at the spread of Ebola worldwide and here in the United States. On Tuesday, the World Health Organization said nearly 9,000 people have now contracted the virus, mostly in West Africa, and that it has a death rate now of 70 percent. They estimated there could be up to 10,000 new Ebola cases per week in the coming months, up from a current 1,000.
This morning, authorities announced a second healthcare worker at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital has tested positive for the disease after caring for Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan in Dallas. The Centers for Disease Control has identified what it calls a "large group" of other workers involved in Duncan’s care who may be at risk.
This comes as the country’s largest nurses union, National Nurses United, says hospitals have failed to protect workers from the virus. In a conference call Tuesday, the union’s co-president, Deborah Burger, said nurses at the Dallas hospital described how they had to use medical tape to secure openings in their flimsy garments and were worried that their necks and heads were exposed as they cared for a patient with explosive diarrhea and projectile vomiting. Burger outlined how the hospital lacked the proper protocol to handle Ebola cases.
DEBORAH BURGER: When Mr. Thomas Eric Duncan first came into the hospital, he arrived with a temperature that was tested with an elevated temperature but was sent home. On his return visit to the hospital, he was brought in by ambulance under suspicion from amongst his family he had Ebola. Mr. Duncan was left for several hours, not in isolation, in an area where other patients were present. Subsequently, a nurse supervisor arrived and demanded that he be moved to an isolation unit, yet faced resistance from other hospital authorities. Lab specimens from Mr. Duncan were sent through the hospital tube system without being specifically sealed and hand-delivered. The result is that the entire tube system, which all the lab specimens are sent, was potentially contaminated.
There was no advance preparedness on what to do with the patient. There was no protocol. There was no system. The nurses were asked to call the infectious disease department. The infectious disease department did not have clear policies to provide either. Initial nurses who interacted with Mr. Duncan wore generic gowns, used in contact-droplet isolation, front and back, three pairs of gloves with no taping around the wrists, surgical masks with the option of an N95 and face shields. Some supervisors said that even the N95 masks were not necessary.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was National Nurses United co-president Deborah Burger. The union conducted a survey in the past few days of some 2,000 healthcare workers in 46 states and found more than 70 percent said they were not given adequate training about Ebola. More than a third said their hospitals lacked sufficient supplies of face shields and fluid-resistant gowns to handle patients with the Ebola virus. Today, the union has organized a national telephone conference call for 3:00 p.m. Eastern time, with more than 6,400 nurses already registered to participate.
AMY GOODMAN: On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced it’s setting up an Ebola response team for hospitals with Ebola patients. This is Director Dr. Thomas Frieden.
DR. THOMAS FRIEDEN: [The second thing that] we will be doing, starting today, is establishing a CDC Ebola response team. For any hospital anywhere in the country that has a confirmed case of Ebola, we will put a team on the ground, within hours, with some of the world’s leading experts in how to take care of and protect healthcare workers from Ebola infection.
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we go to Boston, where we’re joined by Karen Higgins, co-president of National Nurses United. She works as an intensive care unit nurse in Boston. And, Juan, you are also covering this. Today’s column in the New York Daily News, "We are Not Ready!"
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yes. Well, I participated in the conference call that was held by National Nurses United last yesterday—late yesterday with some of the nurses who had been involved in the Dallas hospital where Duncan died. And they were not identified, because the union clearly said that they didn’t want repercussions on them, and they only communicated by email to the union members, but they participated in the phone call. And it was an astounding litany of lapses at the hospital that these nurses claim occurred. And so, I’m glad that we have Karen Higgins here, the co-president of National Nurses United. If you could talk to us about how—the union’s decision to have this press conference and to bring these front-line caregivers to have their voices heard in the national debate and the press coverage of what’s going on with Ebola?
KAREN HIGGINS: Well, I think we needed to bring them forward, and I was glad that they did, and I know it was not easy for them to do it, because we are still, across this country, hearing—and as we heard from Dallas hospital—that, you know, we’re ready, we can take any patient that comes in with Ebola. And I think—you know, then the finger pointing that, oh, the nurse must have broke protocol, and this is why this happened. And the issue is, no, you just did not—you were not and are not prepared to take these patients. There is a higher level of what these patients require for care, as far as protective equipment and as far as training, and we did not do it. And the concern we have is that, you know, Dallas can be repeated in any hospital, and especially, I would say, the vast majority of hospitals in this country, who will continue to say they’re ready and will put us in the same—you know, into the same situation, unless we take this on and make sure that everybody is trained and getting the best equipment we can possibly give them.
AMY GOODMAN: After news emerged that Nina Pham had contracted Ebola, Thomas Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the transmission was the result of, quote, "a breach in protocol." Let’s go to a clip.
DR. THOMAS FRIEDEN: We don’t know what occurred in the care of the index patient, the original patient in Dallas. But at some point there was a breach in protocol, and that breach in protocol resulted in this infection.
AMY GOODMAN: Frieden later apologized for suggesting the nurse was at fault. We haven’t heard anything from the doctors there. Karen Higgins, can you respond?
KAREN HIGGINS: Well, I think that, you know, unfortunately, everybody is trying to not respond, I think, I think out of fear more than anything. But I think that, you know, he was wrong to make that statement. And it is a system problem, but it’s a system that is going to be a problem unless we do something more to give us a, actually, standard of practice that we do with all these patients. This can be contained. Atlanta contained it. They have had no breach in any of their protocols, or had any spread of the disease, and they’ve been taking care of patients. So we know it can be done, if it’s done right.
The problem is, as we already in every hospital know, they’re not. And the nurses are very clear on that, and I think you’ll even hear more when people are on tonight talking about it. They don’t feel ready. They don’t feel they have the equipment. And on top of it, the most important thing is, I need to be trained, and I need one-on-one training. I don’t need an email. I don’t need a videotape. I don’t need a memo. I need one-on-one training, and I need to know that when we’re removing and putting on this equipment, we’re doing it safely, but that I also have the equipment that keeps me safe. And that is not just for nurses, but for all health—you know, all employees that have to have any contact with this patient.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Karen Higgins, I’m wondering if you could comment on some of the allegations of the nurses on what actually happened in the days when Thomas Eric Duncan was at the Texas hospital. They talk about the fact that he came in an ambulance—this is the second time he had come to the hospital—with his family saying that they believed he had Ebola, and yet he was kept for hours in the emergency room among other patients, not isolated immediately. And even when a nurse supervisor complained and said he has to be put in isolation, that there was resistance from her supervisors to that. They talk about hospital supervisors coming in and out of the isolation unit without proper protection. They mention that the specimens for Mr. Duncan were sent through the tube system of the hospital to the labs, rather than being properly sealed and delivered, hand-delivered to the lab, which could possibly contaminate the entire tube system of the hospital. And also, what you mentioned about training, they say that the only training that was offered to them prior to this was a voluntary training, not even a required training, and it was largely just a seminar like any other seminar that they’re given at the hospital. The importance of these lapses in terms of what now seems to be the spread of the virus to at least two health workers and maybe more?
KAREN HIGGINS: Well, I think that, again, it was a perfect storm. It was set up. That, you know, the hospital says, "We are ready for infection," well, we are ready for infection, we’re just not ready for this kind of infection. We were not ready for Ebola, and we were not ready with the precautions that are actually needed to isolate these patients. And it’s really, you know, frustrating, and we are angry. We put everybody at risk when we don’t do things right. And they did not do things right. They did not do the proper training, which is the biggest piece to this. If you train nurses, if you train healthcare workers, not only to be able to pinpoint that somebody has that disease, but to pinpoint that you can isolate them and put them on precautions and do everything you possibly can, wearing precautions to take care of that patient, this would not have happened. And it did happen.
And as I said, you know, we’re hearing from nurses across the country that, you know what, it would be the same scenario, that they’re not doing enough training, that there is a level of infectious disease that we’ve always done training for, but not to this level. And if we’re going to see the possibility of having another patient that has Ebola in another hospital, we have to up the game. We need to be able to take care of that patient way beyond the level that we have our normal training at. And, you know, we need the guidance—not just the guidance, we need a standard of practice so that if we know, from this point on, in every hospital, and not just accept the fact that they keep saying we’re prepared, but we need to mandate that they have a certain level of care, that they have a certain—you know, a level of equipment that is the safest equipment we can use, but that we’re also invested in doing one-on-one training, that we’re doing it one to one, that we are repeating the training, that we are doing drills, that we are doing everything we possibly can, not only to protect those that are taking care of that patient, but to make sure that this never happens again and that somebody else gets infected inside of a hospital because they were taking care of somebody.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to comments made by Marla Weston, the CEO of the American Nurses Association.
MARLA WESTON: We do know is that the process of putting on the protective equipment, taking off the protective equipment, is really detailed and must be done rigorously each and every single time. So I think it’s important for us to understand exactly what happened. Did something go wrong? Or is the protocol—need to be modified? So, until we really know exactly what happened, it’s hard for people to know how to fully protect themselves.
AMY GOODMAN: Your response, Karen Higgins?
KAREN HIGGINS: Well, I mean, you know, again, I think people were waiting to hear what went on. I don’t—I hate to say that most nurses are not surprised at what went on, that they did not have the proper equipment, that there was no real training. And I appreciate now CDC stepping up and saying that they would bring people in if somebody is diagnosed with Ebola. But again, that’s not enough, because we need to be on top of it before that. CDC can be there in a few hours. Well, you know what? There’s going to be a period A, a few hours where somebody has to be—you know, actually picked up that there’s a concern that they have Ebola, then they need to be isolated. All of this should be already going into effect before CDC arrives. And then it would be very helpful to CDC to help them progress from there, but you still have to be prepared for somebody coming in.
And most hospitals in this country, again, other than maybe Nebraska and Atlanta and a few others, are not; nowhere are we nearly prepared to take on this issue. And we need to step the game up, and we need to mandate that you do the right thing, and you do what needs to be done, and you provide the equipment, and you provide the education. And you know what? We can isolate this. We know it can be done. We’ve seen it done in Atlanta. We’ve seen it done in Nebraska. There has been no one showing up because—
AMY GOODMAN: Nebraska has treated a few Ebola patients—
KAREN HIGGINS: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: —and have had no healthcare workers come down with illness, and the patients are all getting better.
KAREN HIGGINS: That’s exactly, and the same goes with Atlanta. So we know it can be done. We just need everybody to make a commitment, and we need CDC to make a stand that we are following the same kind of protocol as far as equipment and actually the rigorous training, because it is true—taking it off and putting it on. And what we actually—they recommend is not only having the good equipment, but to have somebody else always be with that person when they’re dressing and when they’re undressing to make sure that they are safely doing it. And that should be another commitment.
AMY GOODMAN: Nurse Higgins, we have to break, but we’re going to come back with you, as well as another guest. Karen Higgins is co-president of the National Nurses United. She works as an intensive care unit nurse in Boston, where she’s speaking to us from. We’ll be back in a minute.
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Although the rate of new Ebola infections has slowed in some areas, the World Health Organization says it would be premature to read that as a success. New WHO projections suggest there could be between 5,000 and 10,000 new cases a week by December. The head of the United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response told the U.N. Security Council that the steps implemented by the international community are not enough to halt the advance of the fatal disease. "This is an international humanitarian and health crisis," says Lawrence Gostin, university professor and faculty director at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University. Gostin says privatized healthcare has undermined the U.S. response to Ebola, with a lack of available vaccines and access to proper care. "Much of our innovation is driven by the private sector, and from their point of view, Ebola was not a predictable disease and those who got Ebola were too poor to pay for it." We are also joined by Karen Higgins, co-president of National Nurses United.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Although the rate of new Ebola infections in some areas has slowed down, the World Health Organization said Tuesday it would be premature to read that as a success and that projections suggest there may be between 5,000 and 10,000 new cases a week by December. This is WHO Assistant Director-General Bruce Aylward speaking.
DR. BRUCE AYLWARD: We anticipate the number of cases occurring per week by that time is going to be somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 a week; you know, it could be higher, could be lower, you know, but that it’s going to be somewhere in that ballpark. And the goal now is taking all the different pieces of the response that are planned, everything from the Ebola treatment centers to the people deployments to the community engagements, and trying to make sure we’ve got that capacity in place by that time, so that we can ensure 70 percent of cases can be properly managed or isolated, and 70 percent of burials can be done safely by then.
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined in Washington, D.C., by Lawrence Gostin, university professor and faculty director at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University, director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on Public Health Law. Still with us in Boston, Karen Higgins, co-president of the National Nurses United.
Professor Gostin, thanks so much for being with us. Talk about the global scene right now and also what’s happening in the United States, though it seems we are paying much more attention to the global scene because of what’s happening in the United States.
LAWRENCE GOSTIN: Yeah, we are. I mean, I think we have to really remember that the main tragedy is going on in West Africa, and it was an avoidable tragedy, it’s a humanitarian disaster. Just think about what the World Health Organization said. It aspires to handle in a rudimentary way 70 percent of cases. That’s its top level. And that’s just unacceptable. We’re now well over a half a year into this epidemic, well over a half a year, almost coming to nearly a year if you go back to the first index case, and the international community is now only mobilizing. Now, I appreciate everything the United States has done, and they’ve stepped up. President Obama sent military assets in. I think the rest of the world needs to do more. But nonetheless, we have just let this spin out of control in a horrible crisis, a tragedy, really, and are only now mobilizing it when it’s on our front doorstep. We’re better than that. I think we need to do better. And so, I would really like to see us—if we want to be safe here in the United States, we have to attack this at its source in West Africa, and we need to try to get that epidemic under control, first and foremost.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Professor Gostin, about that response, there’s been all the publicity now about the U.S. troops being sent to West Africa to build some treatment centers, but none of those are actually yet operational, and they’re only talking about maybe 1,700 total bed capacity in the treatment centers they expect to build over the next few months. Do you think it’s time maybe to actually just dispatch major ships to be offshore of these African countries and be able to handle a greater volume of patients as they get stricken?
LAWRENCE GOSTIN: I do. And, you know, you have to remember that only for the second time in the history of the United Nations, the U.N. Security Council called a health threat—AIDS was the first, Ebola is the second—a threat to international peace and security. So you have a U.N. Security Council mandate for all countries in the world, with the United States, should be the European Union, Australia, Canada, all of our allies. This is an international humanitarian and health crisis. It threatens the stability of the region politically, economically, and, of course, human health matters most. And yes, so we should be mobilizing much, much more. We should have done it earlier. We should do it now.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Gostin, you’re a specialist in quarantine and issues like that. What do you think about the discussions now, the airports that are setting up to see if people have temperatures? I was just listening to Congressmember Sessions of Texas, who was saying he wants to stop all flights coming in from West Africa from the affected countries, letting U.S. citizens come in, but not anyone else.
LAWRENCE GOSTIN: Yeah, I mean, that is such a bad idea. And in many ways, it’s very mean-spirited. First of all, it won’t make the United States safer; it will actually make us less safe. Here’s why. First of all, if you cut flights, it means that aid workers will find it very difficult getting to and from the affected region. And the countries themselves will experience economic hardship, commercial hardship. Food prices will go up. And ultimately, I think, the epidemic will spin further out of control. It will make these countries more at risk. And the higher the reservoir of infection in West Africa, the greater the risk we have here in the United States, in Canada, the European Union. That’s just basic math. If you have a lot of people infected in a part of the world, and we live in a modern, globalized world, you can’t put a cellophane wrapper around a whole region and expect to keep germs out. It doesn’t work that way. And so, we think we’re trying to save ourselves, but actually we’re making ourselves at greater risk, and we’re also doing something that’s deeply against the American spirit, which is exacerbating the hardships of people that are undergoing unbelievable suffering at the moment. And I just think we’re better than that. And what I hate about this is, is that health is not a Democrat and Republican issue. It’s not party politics. We don’t play games with this. What we do is we send all of our assets that are available to help bring this under control. If we do that, it will help us at home.
I also want to say something about infection control, because we’ve been talking about—there are two lessons I think we can learn. The first is, is that health workers are always on the front lines of the greatest risk. We knew that with SARS. With SARS, it was all the health workers who were at the greatest risk, and now that’s happening with Ebola. And it’s not just here in the United States. In West Africa, they’ve lost several hundred doctors and nurses, and they can ill afford to do that, from Ebola. And the other lesson that we’ve learned is, we can do this—not only in Atlanta and other places in the United States, but Doctors Without Borders, who are operating in horrendous conditions on the ground in West Africa, haven’t had any infections there. So if you have really good equipment, really good training, and you only put your very best-trained people at work with a systems approach and clear protocols, there is no reason for any health worker to become ill.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I’d like to ask Karen—
LAWRENCE GOSTIN: And it’s unacceptable that they should.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I’d like to bring Karen Higgins back into the conversation, co-president of National Nurses United. I wanted specifically to ask you about the role of the CDC in this crisis. The executive director of your union, RoseAnn DeMoro, at yesterday’s press conference, specifically raised the fact that the CDC has no control over these individual hospitals, that in the privatized hospital system that we operate in here in the United States, the CDC can only offer guidelines, and it’s up to individual hospitals whether they’re going to enforce those guidelines, practice those guidelines. And, in fact, the CDC said yesterday, after your press conference, that they have no plans to investigate what happened at Texas Health Presbyterian, that that’s the responsibility of the local Department of Health in Texas.
KAREN HIGGINS: I think, you know—unfortunately, I think she’s right, as far as what powers the CDC has. But the actual interesting part is that when you are looking up any type of—you know, what you do for infections, the place that is always looked to and always looked at is what CDC recommends. And what happens is then CDC makes recommendations, guidelines, and then it falls apart, because what you do with it as an individual hospital, because every hospital is pretty much individual, is where it starts to fall apart. And that’s why we’re saying, what CDC—if everybody is looking to CDC for direction, they need to come up not just with guidelines, but with an actual standard of care, like I said, that everybody will be following, that is expected. And then the follow-up should be with the public health departments in the states to make sure that these hospitals in fact are doing this. And again, putting the teaching in place has to be a huge part of this.
AMY GOODMAN: You know, one—
KAREN HIGGINS: I think, as was discussed—
AMY GOODMAN: One of the ways you learn about—
KAREN HIGGINS: As was discussed, if you do it right—
AMY GOODMAN: One of the ways you learn about how we go from here is for hospitals to admit what they have done wrong. And, Juan, if you could describe the conference call you were on yesterday, who was on the conference call and listening, but not speaking?
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Right. Well, the—
KAREN HIGGINS: You know what? I know that there—I’m sorry.
AMY GOODMAN: I just wanted Juan to describe that conference call—
KAREN HIGGINS: OK.
AMY GOODMAN: —the workers who wanted to protect themselves.
KAREN HIGGINS: Great.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, as I mentioned earlier, the workers were actually in Dallas on the conference call, whereas the union leaders were in Oakland at their national headquarters. And so, because there are no nurses unions in Dallas that represent the workers—so these are non-unionized workers, who were exposed for the possibility of being fired for talking publicly about this situation, and so they actually—as reporters asked questions, they emailed; the nurses emailed their responses to the—
AMY GOODMAN: So they listened, and they emailed their responses to the union?
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And then the union read their responses to the reporters. And this is because of the fear, obviously, that many employees have that they might be retaliated against for talking about these issues and talking about the lapses of their own institution. But—
KAREN HIGGINS: And I—
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yes, Karen Higgins?
KAREN HIGGINS: No, I was going to say, and that is so true. I mean, you know, this hospital has been saying from day one that the protocols were there and everything was good, the protocols were there, they were fine. And I think, you know, to be honest—and then to have the nurses come out and the healthcare workers come out and say, "Oh, no, it wasn’t. No, it was not. This was a lot of, you know, changing of information, not enough equipment, not the right equipment"—you know, I think they’re absolutely right, that they—you know, their fear of being retaliated, because they have come out when the hospital continues to say. And this is the problem. They all continue to say they’re ready. We don’t need another Dallas in another state if another patient shows up.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Larry Gostin, the issue of these vaccines and the issue of the lack of investment in public health, something we’re feeling certainly the blowback from right now—
LAWRENCE GOSTIN: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: —now the NIH says they are developing a vaccine. It sounds like this has been possible for a long time, but private corporations—and which this is usually their purview—they knew there wasn’t a lot to be made in this profit-wise. So, this is why there were so few shots available, whether it’s a vaccine or other drugs. Can you talk about the importance of public health, and are vaccines possible in dealing with Ebola?
LAWRENCE GOSTIN: Yeah, I mean, the problem is, is that most of our innovation is driven by the private sector. And from their point of view, Ebola was not a predictable disease, and those who got Ebola were too poor to pay for it, and so there’s been a lack of investment. Not only were there not enough doses of ZMapp and things, but they weren’t even tested. There are only now vaccines and others going through clinical testing. And so, we really just don’t have those things on the ground.
Just want to make a very quick comment, if I can, about—we call ourselves the most advanced health system in the world, but what do we mean by that? I think what we mean by that is, is that we have the best of the best of the world. But we also have a highly variable system—so many different hospitals, so many different emergency rooms. We have over 3,500 local health authorities. Everybody is—we’ve got such different standards about what we can do. And what we need to do, as Karen says, is up our game. We need to be more uniform, and we need to have systems in place and the kind of equipment and training at every institution, so that this doesn’t happen again. It’s really unacceptable.
AMY GOODMAN: One last quick comment, Washington Post writing, "In the medical response to Ebola, Cuba is punching [far] above its weight."
LAWRENCE GOSTIN: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Cuba answering the call by sending 165 health workers to hard-hit Sierra Leone, a disproportionately large number for a tiny island nation of 11 million people.
LAWRENCE GOSTIN: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Is Cuba an example for the United States, Dr. Gostin?
LAWRENCE GOSTIN: Well, you know, Cuba is—always sends a lot of health workers to humanitarian crises. And I think it is—we need to do much more of that ourselves. But I have to say this: We are—we have sent our military in when very few others have. I think we need to do a heck of a lot more, but the rest of the world needs to do more. I mean, they have just been sitting back and letting this epidemic get out of control, even after the U.N. Security Council. I would venture to say that I would like the U.N. Security Council to come back and pass a binding resolution that would actually set markers for the kinds of resources that are needed to bring this under control. And I think if we do that, we’ll really show a seriousness of purpose. And I think we can do this.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Larry Gostin, thanks so much for being with us, faculty director at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University. We’ll link to details on our website about the National Nurses United conference call today at 3:00 p.m. As Juan pointed out, thousands of nurses have signed up for this conference call from around the country. And, Nurse Higgins, we want to thank you for being with us, Karen Higgins, co-president of the National Nurses United, who works as an intensive care unit nurse in Boston, where she was speaking to us from.
When we come back, we go to Mexico. What’s happened to these scores of students who we have not seen for weeks after a police ambush? Stay with us.
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Protests continue in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero over the disappearance of 43 teachers’ college students missing for more than two weeks following a police ambush. More than 20 police have been detained and accused of collaborating with a drug gang, Guerreros Unidos, that has ties to the city’s mayor, who has fled. Fears over the students’ fate have escalated following the discovery of 10 mass graves. But on Tuesday, Mexican Attorney General Jesús Murillo said DNA tests showed none of the 28 bodies tested so far belong to the missing students. "This particular attack reflects … decades of criminalization of these schools, and a situation where in the current Mexican government it is really hard to tell where the state begins, and where drug cartels end," says Tanalís Padilla, associate professor of Latin American history at Dartmouth College, who is writing a book on the history of rural normal schools in Mexico. Padilla says the schools offer education to low-income students unserved by the public school system, and have a legacy of political radicalism that has prompted political crackdowns in the past. We are also joined by Valeria Hamel, an activist and law student at Mexico City, where students have launched a 48-hour strike, calling for the students to be returned alive. "These students were politically involved in their communities, so that makes us think this is political," Hamel says.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: In the southern Mexican state of Guerrero, protests are continuing over the disappearance of 43 students who have been missing for more than two weeks. The students are from a rural teachers’ college called Ayotzinapa. They had gone to the small city of Iguala to gather funds, when police ambushed their buses. Six people were killed in an initial series of attacks. More than 20 police have been detained and accused of collaborating with a drug gang, Guerreros Unidos, with ties to the city’s mayor, who has fled.
AMY GOODMAN: Fears over the students’ fate have escalated following the discovery of 10 mass graves. But on Tuesday, the Mexican attorney general, Jesús Murillo, said DNA tests showed none of the 28 bodies tested so far belong to the missing students.
ATTORNEY GENERAL JESÚS MURILLO: [translated] What I can say is that the first mass grave we found, the very first one from where we already have results, I can say the remains don’t match the DNA of the families of the missing students. The discovery of these mass graves confirms the level of danger of this group that operates in the region called Guerreros Unidos.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: On Tuesday, authorities said the leader of the drug gang, Guerreros Unidos, which is suspected in the students’ disappearance, killed himself after a battle with federal police.
The students’ disappearance has sparked mass protests across Mexico and around the world. Last week, parents of the victims traveled from Guerrero to Mexico City, where they joined tens of thousands calling for officials to work harder to find the students. Macedonia Torres, the mother of a missing student, said authorities would do more if it was their child missing.
MACEDONIA TORRES: [translated] They will move heaven and earth to find them. This is what we are going to do. We’re going to do whatever it takes to find them, and we will not rest until we do.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Protesters have continued to call for the students to be returned alive. In Mexico City, students have launched a 48-hour strike. On Monday in the capital of Guerrero state, demonstrators set a government building on fire. In a separate incident also in that state on Sunday, police opened fire on a van filled with students traveling back from the resort city of Acapulco, hitting and injuring a German exchange student. Authorities said 15 to 20 police have been detained.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, for more, we’re joined now by two guests. We’re going to go first to Mexico City, where we’re joined by Democracy Now! video stream by Valeria Hamel. She is a human rights activist, student organizer, law student at ITAM University in Mexico City.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Valeria. Can you talk about what’s happened in Mexico?
VALERIA HAMEL: Hi, good morning. Yes, well, as you have heard now, there was—there are 43 students missing after a shooting by local policemen in Iguala, in the city of Iguala in the state of Guerrero. And these students, they were politically involved in their communities, and so that makes us think this is political. You were speaking about the drug dealers being involved in this, and that’s where we would like to intervene in the discussion, because we think this is much more complicated than that. You have to understand, the state of Guerrero, how there’s guerrilla going on, for example, on one side, and there’s also paramilitaries, people like civilians trained, financed and organized by the military, who are also involved in what ends up being the government in this type of places. And so, it’s really complicated what happened there. We assume this is political, and we want these students to appear again.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Valeria Hamel, could you talk about these rural schools and the conflicts that they often have with local authorities, the history of conflicts with some of them?
VALERIA HAMEL: Yes, sure. This school, in particular, they’re teachers’ colleges, rural teachers’ colleges, where students come from like peasant families and villages around the area, really like rather poor people who go here to be teachers, because it gives them a stable job opportunity. And these are kids who are good at school, and they want to teach their communities. Most of them get also taught to be bilingual teachers, indigenous—both indigenous and Spanish teachers, which is also really interesting how this works.
And these schools, they are really politically organized. They have been so for many, many years. One of the main leaders of the '70s guerrilla thing, war between the government and the rural areas, came from this school. And since then, they've been really organized. There is a big federation of these schools, who are—who claim that they’re socialists. And they are also really—rather, they do extreme measures in their way of doing politics, because they have been pushed to that, because they come from really difficult communities. The government is constantly trying to criminalize them, is constantly trying to take away the funds of these schools. In 2011, two students from this same school were murdered by policemen. So, these students, their reaction is to fight back somehow and to also teach in their schools political knowledge. Not only do they become teachers, but they become also like social fighters.
AMY GOODMAN: In addition to Valeria Hamel, who’s speaking to us from Mexico, we’re joined by Tanalís Padilla, associate professor of Latin American history at Dartmouth College, who’s currently a visiting lecturer at University College London, the author of Rural Resistance in the Land of Zapata. She’s currently writing a book on the history of these rural normal schools in Mexico, which is called The Unintended Lessons of Revolution. Can you put this in a larger context for us, Professor Padilla?
TANALÍS PADILLA: Yes, thank you, Amy. Yeah, the political history, the social history of these schools is really significant for 20th century Mexico. They stem from the social reforms implemented in the 1930s that resulted from the revolution that took place between 1910 and 1920, and were one of the few avenues where peasants could have an education. And so, they were, in one sense, validating the agrarian experience, because at these schools students were also taught or encouraged to cultivate the land and have all sorts of cooperative projects, while at the same time receiving an education. And so, for decades, these schools have sought to preserve the spirit of these social reforms. And after the 1930s, after President Lázaro Cárdenas left office, they have been, as Valeria already noted, either abandoned or outwardly attacked. So, to the extent that they are radical hubs or radical hubs of political organizing, I think must be understood, and to the extent to which the state has abandoned its commitment to education, a commitment that under the constitution it’s supposed to have. And these rural normales constitute part of that larger social program of public education and commitment to the countryside.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Professor Padilla, the question of the proliferation of these drug cartels and gangs in not only the north of Mexico but in other rural areas of Mexico, and the impact that that’s had on these conflicts with students?
TANALÍS PADILLA: Yeah, so I think these last attacks, these latest attacks, which, again, are not a new attack on normales rurales—they have been criminalized for decades—are basically the logical culmination of, on the one hand, the criminalization of these schools, in which their students are constantly seen not as students but as political agitators—sometimes that’s the best case. Sometimes they’re just seen as people who are kids who just want to destroy public property and sabotage the social order, who are not committed to studying. That’s the way they’re portrayed in the media. So, the fact that this creates a narrative under which they can be attacked by impunity, whether it be the government or whether it be criminal organization, so this particular attack, I think, reflects that logical culmination of the decades of criminalization of these schools and a situation in which the current Mexican government, it’s really hard to tell where the state begins and where drug cartels end.
AMY GOODMAN: And the role of police?
TANALÍS PADILLA: The role of police here is very significant. Again, historically, when students mount any sort of social mobilization here, to just demand simple things like food for these schools, an increase in scholarships, the protection of the infrastructure for these schools, they’re instantly seen as criminals, and the police is then charged with attacking them. And in this last—or containing their mobilization, which often involves attacking them. In this particular mobilization, it’s really significant to see that it was the police who first shot at them, the police who first detained these students and took them, and then, it looks like, handed them over to a criminal organization or to a drug cartel.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you believe the students are still alive?
TANALÍS PADILLA: It’s very hard to tell, honestly. The fact that the DNA showed that they were not those in this mass grave, to a certain extent gives us hope. On the other hand, just the sheer amount of days that have now passed and not turning up, to me, points to a bit of a tragic end. Not to mention, just in the whole context of this is what unfortunately is now becoming the norm in Mexico—mass graves, assassinations. For a long time, political analysts have warned that the militarization of the drug war has been targeting social activists, not just the drug cartels. And I think this becomes very explicit here.
AMY GOODMAN: Tanalís Padilla, we have to leave it there, I’m sorry to say, associate professor of Latin American history—
TANALÍS PADILLA: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: —at Dartmouth, speaking to us from London. We’ll certainly continue to cover this. And Valeria Hamel, human rights activist, law student in Mexico City.
Headlines:
WHO: Growing Ebola Infections Could Bring 10,000 New Cases per Week
The World Health Organization says nearly 9,000 people have now contracted the Ebola virus, mostly in West Africa, with a death rate of 70 percent. On Tuesday, WHO Assistant Director General Bruce Aylward estimated there could be up to 10,000 new Ebola cases per week in the coming months, up from the current 1,000.
Dr. Bruce Aylward: "It’s 8,914 cases, are the number today. We will go over 9,000 cases this week, this trend, as you can see. The number of reported deaths are 4,447 as of this morning. We anticipate the number of cases occurring per week by that time is going to be somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 a week; it could be higher, could be lower, but it’s going to be somewhere in that ballpark."
2nd Texas Nurse Diagnosed with Ebola; CDC Admits Slow Response
A second Texas healthcare worker has tested positive for Ebola after treating the first person diagnosed with the disease on U.S. soil. The unnamed worker follows the positive diagnosis of nurse Nina Pham, who is said to be in good condition. Both treated Thomas Eric Duncan, who died last week. The Centers for Disease Control has identified what it calls a "large group" of other workers involved in Duncan’s care who may be at risk. The nation’s largest nurses union, National Nurses United, has accused hospitals of failing to protect workers from the virus. On Tuesday, the CDC acknowledged it should have acted faster to respond to the Duncan case, saying it might have prevented the workers’ infections. CDC Director Thomas Frieden also announced the establishment of new units to respond to Ebola cases.
Dr. Thomas Frieden: "The second thing that we will be doing, starting today, is establishing a CDC Ebola response team. For any hospital anywhere in the country that has a confirmed case of Ebola, we will put a team on the ground, within hours, with some of the world’s leading experts in how to take care of and protect healthcare workers from Ebola infection."
U.N.: ISIS Advance Displaces over 180,000 from Iraqi Town of Heet
The United Nations continues to warn of a worsening crisis for Iraqi civilians displaced by ISIS advances in Iraq. On Tuesday, a spokesperson for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said more than 180,000 people have fled the town of Heet.
Melissa Fleming: "After the capture of Heet by ISIS and affiliated armed groups over the weekend, we estimate that 180,000 people have fled from that town. This is located just 180 kilometers from Baghdad. The city’s residents are mostly Sunni, but it also was home to or refuge to a large number of displaced people, who fled there from other parts of Anbar province before. It is an absolute tragedy to see these people uprooted and the Iraq that was once home to such a rich variety of peoples being segregated and pushed away and lumped together."
Obama Talks "Long-Term Campaign" with Defense Chiefs from Anti-ISIS Coalition
On Tuesday, President Obama met with the defense ministers from more than 20 governments involved in the U.S.-led campaign against the Islamic State. Speaking at the Andrews Air Force Base, Obama said the offensive against ISIS will be a long one.
President Obama: "One of the things that has emerged from the discussions, both before I came and during my visit here, is that this is going to be a long-term campaign. There are not quick fixes involved. We’re still at the early stages. As with any military effort, there will be days of progress and there are going to be periods of setback, but our coalition is united behind this long-term effort."
White House Walks Back Claim of Agreement on Turkey Bases
The Obama administration says it continues to hold talks with Turkey on hosting U.S.-led troops for the fight against the Islamic State. National Security Adviser Susan Rice had said Turkey would provide its military bases, a claim the Turkish government then denied. At the White House, Press Secretary Josh Earnest said the talks are ongoing.
Josh Earnest: "This issue of military bases in Turkey is an issue that continues to be discussed between American officials and Turkish officials."
Reporter: "So at this point, there is no formal agreement on that front?"
Josh Earnest: "Well, I think that might obvious from the public comments from both sides. But this is something that we continue to discuss with them."
The Obama administration has pressured Turkey to take a more active role against ISIS, while Turkey has requested a buffer zone along its border with Syria. The dispute comes as Turkish warplanes have bombed one of the main groups fighting ISIS, the Kurdish Workers’ Party, or PKK. The Turkish military says it acted in retaliation to PKK attacks. The strikes are the first by Turkey against the PKK since a truce reached in 2012.
Texas Abortion Clinics to Remain Open After Supreme Court Overturns Anti-Choice Measures
The Supreme Court has overturned key anti-choice restrictions that have gutted abortion access in Texas. A decision by a federal appeals court this month allowed hospital-style building requirements to go into effect, shuttering all but eight abortion facilities in a state that previously had more than 40. Abortion providers reported a massive spike in phone calls and wait times for abortion, as women in large parts of the state were faced with long travel times to the nearest provider. According to advocates, Tuesday’s ruling means at least 13 clinics will be able to reopen today. But the move is only temporary as the initial federal court ruling is appealed. In a statement, the Center for Reproductive Rights said: "This fight against Texas’ sham abortion law is not over."
Appeals Court Restores Texas Voter ID Law for November Election
A federal appeals court has restored Texas’ controversial voter ID law just days after it was struck down. A federal judge overturned the law last week, calling it an "unconstitutional poll tax" that discriminates against voters of color. But on Tuesday, a three-judge panel said Texas can enforce the ID law in the November election, because dropping it would cause confusion. The panel did not rule on whether the law should permanently stand.
Hong Kong Police Make Largest Number of Arrests Since Protests Began
In Hong Kong, police in riot gear have launched a crackdown on pro-democracy activists who have been protesting for weeks to demand greater political freedom. Police used pepper spray and batons, arresting 45 people. The protests have been further galvanized by video footage from a local TV broadcaster that shows a group of plainclothes police dragging a man behind a building, then beating and kicking him. Hong Kong’s security chief says the officers have been "temporarily removed from current duties." Protesters are vowing to defy the crackdown and continue their call for free elections without intervention from China.
Nigerian Protesters Mark Six Months Since Schoolgirls’ Kidnapping
In Nigeria, demonstrators are marking six months since the kidnapping of more than 200 schoolgirls by the Boko Haram. On Tuesday, dozens of people with the "Bring Back Our Girls" campaign rallied in the capital Abuja.
Veronica Caamba: "We, as civil citizens, had written the president a week ago, notifying him that we were coming to see him to inquire why our girls are not yet back. It is no longer about updates on what is going on, which we never get anyway. We are here today to demand the immediate and urgent return of our girls. We are angry Nigerians. It’s taken too long. It’s 183 days today, six months."
U.S. Military Contractor Killed, Another Wounded in Saudi Arabia Shooting
An American military contractor has been killed and another wounded in a shooting in the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh. The two are employees of a subsidiary of the Virginia-based contracting giant Northrop Grumman. The Saudi government says it has arrested a suspect who formerly worked with the two victims. In Washington, State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki said the United States has issued a security advisory to Americans in Saudi Arabia.
Jen Psaki: "Obviously, we evaluate our security posture when incidents occur. Certainly, we’re in the process of evaluating our security posture. We’ll take appropriate steps to ensure that all of U.S. mission personnel are safe, of course. We typically issue — our embassy is issuing, I should say, a security message to U.S. citizens to advise them on the situation and any safety precautions."
Report: U.S. Hid Injuries of Soldiers Wounded by Western-Supplied Chemical Weapons in Iraq
A new report says the Bush administration concealed the discovery of chemical weapons in Iraq that had been developed with U.S. support in the 1980s — and then denied medical care to the wounded American soldiers involved. According to The New York Times, U.S. troops secretly reported finding more than 5,000 chemical warheads, shells or bombs after the 2003 invasion. All of the chemical weaponry predated 1991, just one year after Saddam Hussein stopped being a U.S. ally and recipient of the Western military aid that helped build his arsenal. At least 17 American and six Iraqi troops were wounded in their handling of the munitions in six separate incidents between 2004 and 2011. The weapons’ existence was kept from the troops entering those areas, and officials denied the victims the care they needed. One soldier talked about his health problems as a result of chemical exposure.
Andrew Goldman: "I still have residual blisters every now and then. I still have a lot of trouble breathing. I have a constant headache. I haven’t not had a headache since 2008 … Only thing I can think of is politics. Doesn’t jive with the story they wanted."
In addition to raising new questions about the neglect of soldiers’ health and the Bush administration’s false pretext for going to war, the disclosure also carries implications for Iraq’s ongoing crisis. The Islamic State now controls most of the territory where the chemical weapons were found.
Police: Ballistic Evidence Implicates St. Louis Man Shot Dead by Officer
In Missouri, police say ballistic evidence shows a man fatally shot by police last week opened fire first. An off-duty officer killed 18-year-old Vonderitt Myers after approaching a group Myers was standing with on the street. Myers’ family has insisted he was unarmed, holding only a sandwich he had bought moments before. But the Missouri Highway Patrol says new residue tests and ballistic evidence support the officer’s claim that Myers fired at least three times before the officer shot back. Myers’ killing has sparked new protests as demonstrators continue to rally for justice two months after the police shooting of unarmed black teen Michael Brown.
Chicago Teachers Union President Has Brain Tumor, Won’t Pursue Mayoral Bid
A top labor leader and champion for public education in Chicago has been diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumor. Karen Lewis, the president of the Chicago Teachers Union, has led the struggle against school closures and privatization in Chicago, culminating in a teachers’ strike that made national headlines two years ago. Her medical condition will prevent her from running against Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel in next year’s election, a move she had been strongly considering. A recent poll had placed Lewis ahead of Emanuel by nine points. In a statement, a spokesperson said: "Karen Lewis has decided to not pursue a mayoral bid. Yet she charges us to continue fighting for strong neighborhood schools, safe communities and good jobs for everyone."
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"We Need Medical Boots on the Ground Now" by Amy Goodman
 Shutterstock
The headlines shift hourly between Ebola and ISIS. The question is often asked, “Should we put boots on the ground?” The answer is yes—but not in the Middle East. We need tens of thousands of boots on the ground dealing with Ebola: boots of doctors, nurses, health professionals, dealing with this wholly preventable global health disaster.
Ebola is a small virus that is revealing very large problems with the world’s public health systems. The few known cases here in the United States have provoked a climate of fear and a growing awareness of just how vulnerable we are to a virulent illness let loose in our society. Imagine how people feel in the impoverished West African nations of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, where the number of cases is in the thousands, and the infrastructure is simply incapable of dealing with the burgeoning number of infected people.
“This is an international humanitarian and health crisis. It threatens the stability of the region politically, economically, and, of course, human health matters most,” said Lawrence Gostin, faculty director at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University. Speaking on the “Democracy Now!” news hour, he said, “For the second time in the history of the United Nations, the U.N. Security Council called a health threat—AIDS was the first, Ebola is the second.” He was speaking as news arrived that a second health worker in Dallas tested positive for Ebola. “We should be mobilizing much, much more,” he said. “We should have done it earlier. We should do it now.”
The World Health Organization announced the latest Ebola outbreak in Guinea on March 23 of this year. The outbreak grew, spreading to neighboring countries and jumping over several to reach Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria. It killed tens, then hundreds, but largely stayed off the world stage until two white, American aid workers contracted the disease. Dr. Kent Brantly and missionary Nancy Writebol were separately flown back to the United States. With the first Ebola patients ever to set foot in the U.S. shrouded in isolation suits, the disease became the lead story across the country.
Remarkably, as people were dying en masse of Ebola in West Africa, these two Americans survived, treated to some of the few existing doses of the experimental drug known as ZMapp. These are positive outcomes made possible with a well-funded health-care system.
Enter Thomas Eric Duncan. He, too, had been infected by the Ebola virus. His illness progressed quite differently. His nephew, Josephus Weeks, summed it up eloquently in a piece published by The Dallas Morning News:
“On Friday, Sept. 25, 2014, my uncle Thomas Eric Duncan went to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas. He had a high fever and stomach pains. He told the nurse he had recently been in Liberia. But he was a man of color with no health insurance and no means to pay for treatment, so within hours he was released with some antibiotics and Tylenol.”
Duncan went home to be cared for by his family, but got progressively sicker. Two days later, he went back to the hospital, where he was admitted with suspicion of Ebola. He rapidly declined and died on Oct. 8, as Weeks wrote, “alone in a hospital room.” Within days, we learned that one of his health-care workers, critical-care nurse Nina Pham, had contracted Ebola. Then another nurse, Amber Vinson, showed symptoms. Hours before she was diagnosed, she was on a plane with more than 130 people, flying back from Cleveland to Dallas. What if we had a health-care system that guaranteed thorough treatment, regardless of whether or not patients have private health insurance?
Republican Congressman Pete Sessions, who represents part of Dallas, told CNN that he wanted to block flights from West Africa from entering the U.S., though he said he would allow U.S. citizens through. I asked Lawrence Gostin for his response: “That is such a bad idea. ... We live in a modern, globalized world; you can’t put a cellophane wrapper around a whole region and expect to keep germs out. It doesn’t work that way. And so, we think we’re trying to save ourselves, but actually we’re making ourselves at greater risk.”
The small island nation of Cuba has sent more than 160 doctors to West Africa to treat patients and help stem the spread of this epidemic. We should learn from Cuba. Instead, President Barack Obama sent in the Marines. They will soon be building field hospitals. But who will staff these new facilities? United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has created an emergency task force to confront the Ebola crisis. The world must come together to save lives and stop this preventable catastrophe that threatens us all.
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
 Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 1,200 stations in North America. She is the co-author of “The Silenced Majority,” a New York Times best-seller.
© 2014 Amy Goodman
Distributed by King Features Syndicate
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