Personnel ‘Crisis’
“There’s a real urgent crisis in personnel,” Hart said. “You can’t deal with a kind of crisis like this when there’s no place for people to go and the very people helping those getting sick are catching it and dying.”
The U.S. response, he said, has been “very forceful.” ONE is lobbying even harder in other Western nations that haven’t sufficiently responded to the outbreak, he said, including France, Canada and Australia.
“Other countries really need to step up much more aggressively and quickly than they have so far,” he said. “This is not a burden the United States can carry on its own, nor should it.”
Zimek has sold more than 200 of its disinfecting systems to clients including the Department of Homeland Security, the company’s chairman, Rob Theisen, said in a phone interview. The device, which fills a room or vehicle with disinfecting mist and then vacuums it out, costs about $60,000.
A fire department in the Dallas area ordered 10 of the units after an ambulance that carried the first U.S. Ebola patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, to the hospital had to be taken out of service to be cleaned, Theisen said.
Dentons is lobbying the government to recommend the Zimek equipment to aircraft makers and airlines, Theisen said, and also to influence new rules expected on protecting health-care workers and paramedics from infection.
“We want to be involved if we can have input into that,” he said. “We want to make sure these folks are protected.” (Bloomberg)