To the Editor:

Free Press Editor Debbie Galbraith covered the story of the Ebola crisis and missteps thoroughly. However, she missed a couple of very important points.

First of all, Congress, in its effort to reduce the size of government, had extensively cut the funding to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and NIH (National Institutes of Health). There were scientists working on a treatment for Ebola that had to stop when the funding dried up.

Secondly, Texas, the state that has threatened numerous times to secede from our Union, begged for help from the government and CDC after Thomas Eric Duncan died. Duncan, who was exhibiting symptoms, was turned away from a Dallas, Texas, hospital even though he revealed to a nurse he had been exposed to the Ebola virus. This hospital also unnecessarily exposed its medical staff to the virus due to a lack of protective practices that should have been in place.

And lastly, the appointment of an Ebola Czar makes no sense when there is a more than qualified Surgeon General candidate in Dr. Vivek Murthy, just waiting to be approved by our do-nothing Congress. We don't need a czar, we need a Surgeon General to oversee the response to this crisis.

Jane Aylor Fretz

Lower Macungie Township