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The White House is reversing its previous insistence that government departments were coordinating the federal response to the presence of Ebola in the US successfully even without a single figurehead heading up the effort and appointing a so-called Ebola “czar”.
Ron Klain, a lawyer who also worked for Al Gore when he was vice-president and is currently general counsel of an investment group, will be responsible for making sure that state and federal agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Department for Homeland Security are working more effectively to track possible exposure to the disease.
On Friday night night, the White House also said it was installing a senior official from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help federal, state and local officials in Dallas deal with the crisis. A White House liaison will serve on the ground in Dallas, it added.
“Klain, an attorney, comes to the job with strong management credentials, extensive federal government experience overseeing complex operations and good working relationships with leading members of Congress, as well as senior Obama administration officials, including the president,” said a senior administration official in a statement emailed to reporters on Friday.
His appointment, first reported by CNN, comes after President Barack Obama conceded such a role might be necessary in answer to a question from reporters on Thursday evening.
“It may make sense for us to have one person … so that after this initial surge of activity, we can have a more regular process just to make sure that we’re crossing all the T’s and dotting all the I’s going forward,” Obama said after a briefing with his advisers.
Previously, the White House “point person” on Ebola was the homeland security and counter-terrorism adviser, Lisa Monaco, who is also partially responsible for coordinating the administration’s response to Islamic State extremists.
Sylvia Burwell, secretary of health and human services, and Susan Rice, Obama’s national security adviser, have also been playing a key role, but the president accepted on Thursday that they all had a number of conflicting responsibilities.
The White House said Klain would report directly to Monaco and Rice to ensure “that efforts to protect the American people by detecting, isolating and treating Ebola patients in this country are properly integrated but don’t distract from the aggressive commitment to stopping Ebola at the source in west Africa”.
There is currently no permanent US surgeon general in post after the president’s nominee encountered fierce opposition from the National Rifle Association, which was critical of his past support for gun control.
Thomas Frieden, director of the CDC, also faced criticism from Congress on Thursday during the first hearings into the administration’s response.
Earlier on Thursday, the secretary of state, John Kerry, called on other countries to do more to help the US tackle the Ebola outbreak in west Africa.
Summoning foreign ambassadors and diplomatic officials to a briefing at the State Department, Kerry called extra vehicles and helicopters as well as funds for international aid efforts, describing the “brutal epidemic” in west Africa as “heart-wrenching, gut-wrenching”.
“No one country is going to resolve this problem by themselves,” he said. “This is going to take a collective global response: all hands on deck, that’s how we are going to get this done.”
