Opinion: It's time for the CDC to return to its real mission

photo Robin Smith

What do you get when a government entity created to address public health and responses to communicable illness operates outside its mission and purpose with its key leaders more characteristic of an Ivy League professors' lounge than a highly responsive team of clinical medical professionals equipped with more than theory and unproven policy?

You get the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that's overseeing the answer to the deadly question of Ebola.

From its own website, verbatim:

"CDC works 24/7 to protect America from health, safety and security threats, both foreign and in the U.S. Whether diseases start at home or abroad, are chronic or acute, curable or preventable, human error or deliberate attack, CDC fights disease and supports communities and citizens to do the same.

"CDC increases the health security of our nation. As the nation's health protection agency, CDC saves lives and protects people from health threats. To accomplish our mission, CDC conducts critical science and provides health information that protects our nation against expensive and dangerous health threats, and responds when these arise."

The CDC was birthed out of a malaria outbreak in the U.S. with a $1 million budget. Its personnel were devoted to mosquito-control and destruction of the insect's habitat.

Translation: The CDC was created to identify a public health problem, to develop a strategy to isolate, minimize and/or remove the cause of said problem, and to provide educational and health care research to treat and/or prevent.

I write this based on my undergraduate degree conferred, Bachelor of Science in nursing, by the University of Tennessee; as a registered nurse who worked in a critical care area in a Level 1 trauma center, organ transplant facility, and teaching hospital; and one certified in project management from Stanford University. My opinion is based on a working knowledge and practice in health care and in the planning, acquiring, mobilizing and tracking of resources to accomplish a predetermined goal. There's nothing political about this opinion.

What's happened at this federal agency created to address public health and community safety related to the transmission of illness and disease?

Well, the CDC's mission expanded from killing the vector of malaria in 1946 to managing venereal disease, tuberculosis and then to disability, injury control and chronic illnesses like diabetes and heart disease when the word "Prevention" was added to the agency's moniker in 1992. As easily observed, some of these are communicable by chosen behavior, some through public exposure, and some are just not communicable but, instead, a result of poor health choices.

The CDC's budget has increased to a reported $6.9 billion in 2014, an 8.2 percent increase from 2013.

Now America is faced with a true infectious disease issue that, while not easily contracted through incidental contact, does, indeed, involve a communicable pathogen and has a mortality rate of 70 percent -- meaning that if 10 people become Ebola-positive, at least seven of those will perish.

Ebola hemorrhagic fever should say enough.

A few observations:

• The CDC is a federal agency. Our tax dollars fund all its activities and, it, as a function of its mission, has the priority of protecting America first.

• The CDC now stands center stage to mobilize its resources, research and proven results, yet seems to be stumbling, correcting and misinforming. Its primary goal, currently, appears to be managing expectations in maintaining calm rather than isolating a deadly pathogen.

• The CDC is now in a crisis due to its own mission creep.

The CDC should be performing a formidable public good. It must urgently return to its purpose of protecting America.

Robin Smith, immediate past Tennessee Republican Party chairwoman, is owner of Rivers Edge Alliance.

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