With regard to the November 2014 Ebola scare in the United States, do you think the public health and medical professionals involved in the Ebola cluster investigation followed proper protocols? If so, what best practices were used? If not, what could have been done differently? Remember to cite references where necessary. When responding to classmates, provide additional critiques on approaches used by public health and medical professionals during the U.S. Ebola cluster investigation. Response must be 300 words. 1st Discussion post for response: Communities depend on public health organizations to “come to their rescue” and prevent epidemics from becoming pandemics. It is important that proper protocols are followed to ensure the safety of the public and to maintain trust from the community. When public health officials “drop the ball” community members are less likely to be cooperative during a state of emergency which inhibit proper handling of cases. According to one study, there is a conspiracy among certain individuals who believe the government created AIDS to kill minorities, and another 10% did not trust their provider to give them appropriate medical care (Whetten, et al., 2006). With that said, there is a lack of trust within certain populations. Adding to this distrust, I don’t believe the Ebola scare was handled as well as it could have been, and I’m not convinced that proper protocol was followed by the medical professionals. The crisis management plan was not followed appropriately and there were many improvisations made which lead to deaths that could have been prevented. According to one article’s documentation of the timeline, the first patient, Mr. Duncan was initially sent home from the hospital with antibiotics because the diagnosis of Ebola was missed, he was then formally diagnosed with Ebola days later on September 30th; Within the first five days after diagnosis there were 15 people being monitored for symptoms, after the first five days there were reports of over 80 people were being monitored and by 10 days after Duncan’s diagnosis he was dead (Andrew, Arlikatti, Chatterjee, & Ismayilov, 2018). There were 76 medical personnel that came into contact with Duncan and it was reported that they wore so much protective equipment that they actually increased the risk of contamination, for this reason the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had determined that it was the Hospital’s fault for the spread and admits that they did not have enough capacity to contain the crisis despite their earlier claims (Andrew, Arlikatti, Chatterjee, & Ismayilov, 2018). The WHO declared a level 3 emergency, which is the highest level of emergency in an attempt to cease the spread of Ebola, there were reported “overwhelming demands” due to the outbreak that the WHO could not contain without assistance, they would need help of other organizations (decisive government action such as bans on travel and trade) to meet all of the .