New York Ebola doctor criticises 'vilification' by politicians and media

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/26/new-york-doctor-ebola-vilification-politicians-media

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Related: Craig Spencer, declared free of Ebola, says he is 'living example' of how virus protocols worked

Craig Spencer, the doctor who was found to have Ebola days after returning to New York City from Guinea, wrote in an essay published on Wednesday that he was mistakenly cast as a “fraud, a hipster, and a hero” by the media as he fought for his life from a hospital bed.

“The truth is I am none of those things,” Spencer wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine. “I’m just someone who answered a call for help and was lucky enough to survive.”

In the essay, Spencer details how his diagnosis and illness affected him physically and psychologically during the 19 days he spent recovering at New York’s Bellevue hospital.

“Though I didn’t know it then – I had no television and was too weak to read the news – during the first few days of my hospitalization, I was being vilified in the media even as my liver was failing and my fiancée was quarantined in our apartment,” he wrote.

Spencer said he lost 20lbs, “was febrile for two weeks, and struggled to the bathroom up to a dozen times a day”.

Spencer said he felt as if his illness was being used by politicians “caught up in the election season” as a political prop, helping to make them appear presidential in the face of a deadly, foreign disease.

Related: Kaci Hickox accuses governors of exploiting Ebola fears for political gain

In the controversy that followed his diagnosis, New York governor Andrew Cuomo and New Jersey governor Chris Christie introduced tougher procedures for people returning from west Africa, resulting in the detention of a Médecins Sans Frontières nurse at Newark airport in New Jersey. The nurse, Kaci Hickox, forcefully criticised her treatment, saying it would prevent more volunteers going to west Africa to help fight the disease.

On 23 October, Spencer was taken to Bellevue hospital after reporting a slightly elevated fever. An official told the public he began feeling fatigue two days prior, which prompted widespread speculation that he could have infected New Yorkers during one of his well-documented outings, which included several trips on the subway, a visit to the Gutter bowling alley in the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn and a ride in an Uber cab.

Related: Stop calling me 'the Ebola nurse' | Kaci Hickox

“The whole country soon knew where I like to walk, eat, and unwind,” he wrote. “People excoriated me for going out in the city when I was symptomatic, but I hadn’t been symptomatic – just sad.”

Upon his return from Guinea, Spencer never veered from the guidelines set by MSF: he monitored his health every day and at the first sign of an elevated temperature he called officials. Within hours, he had been transferred to Bellevue by medical staff wearing full protective gear, under the city’s procedures to deal with a potential Ebola infection.

“The media and politicians could have educated the public about Ebola,” he wrote. “Instead, they spent hours retracing my steps through New York and debating whether Ebola can be transmitted through a bowling ball.”

He added: “Instead of being welcomed as respected humanitarians, my US colleagues who have returned home from battling Ebola have been treated as pariahs.”

In the essay, Spencer also recounts his time spent in Guinea fighting the Ebola outbreak, which has claimed 9,500 lives in west Africa since December 2013. He urged the public and the media not to turn away from the epidemic that is still claiming lives in the region, even though the outbreak has stabilized in some areas.

“Every day, I looked forward to putting on the personal protective equipment and entering the treatment center,” he wrote. “No matter how exhausted I felt when I woke up, an hour of profuse sweating in the suit and the satisfaction I got from treating ill patients washed away my fear and made me feel new again.”