EbolaCDC’s disease detectives help deal with Ebola crisis
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Epidemic Intelligence Service(EIS) is the federal government’s intelligence gathering arm for mysterious or unidentified diseases anywhere in the world.The program is staffed with postdoctoral fellows who often go on to hold significant positions in public health or medical academia. The United States Public Health Service (now the CDC) established the EIS in 1951 out of concerns about biological warfare against the U.S. homeland during the Korean War.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) is the federal government’s intelligence gathering arm for mysterious or unidentified diseases anywhere in the world.
“Did you also know that there are disease detectives?” Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland) asked the Senate during the 2013 government shutdown. “Many people don’t know that there are disease detectives,” Mikulski said, as she urged her colleagues to give funding back to the CDC. “Sometimes there is an outbreak and people get sick. People even die. They wonder what it is. They dial 911, and there is a group of people who are like a disease identification SWAT team. They work with the best and brightest at that state level, use the best technology in science from our country, and even around the world, to identify what that is.”
According to the Washington Post, the program is staffed with postdoctoral fellows who often go on to hold significant positions in public health or medical academia. CDC director Tom Frieden was a member of the elite group of researchers, scientists, and investigators. Lawrence Altman, a medical doctor and member of theNew York Times science news staff, used the occasion of the program’s 50th anniversary to describe his former position as an EIS officer: “As epidemiologists, we acted as part scientists, historians, sleuths, statisticians and journalists, relying on people’s willingness and memories to tell what happened to them, their relatives and friends,” Altman wrote.
The United States Public Health Service (now the CDC) established the EIS in 1951 out of concerns about biological warfare against the U.S. homeland during the Korean War. Since then, the program has investigated cases of polio, West Nile virus, anthrax, and Ebola in Uganda and Zaire. Today, EIS agents are called upon to help manage the Ebola virus in America.
Five hours after the CDC confirmed the first Ebola case in the United States, Charnetta Smith, an EIS officer, along with nine other CDC staffers, arrived in Dallas to help contain the disease carried to Dallas by Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian, who contracted the virus in Monrovia. In West Africa and Dallas, EIS officers are relying on a process called contact tracing to gain insight on how Ebola is spread within communities, and how to reduce the infection rate.
Contact tracing was developed in part by EIS officer Ilana Schafer after returning from her assignment in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo as part of the 2012 Ebola and Marburg hemorrhagic fever outbreaks response efforts.
