Obama urges Americans to honor aid workers fighting Ebola in Africa

Reporting from Washington — President Obama on Tuesday urged Americans to set aside their fears of the Ebola virus and make sure U.S. healthcare workers who go to West Africa are “applauded, thanked and supported” when they return home.

If those workers are successful in fighting the virus at the source of the outbreak, he said, “we don’t have to worry about it here.”

“They are doing God’s work over there,” Obama said, “and they are doing that to keep us safe.”

In a statement scheduled at the last minute, the president spoke of the heroics of the aid workers and defended his administration’s response to Ebola, which has included guidelines for returning workers that are less stringent than the quarantines put in place by some states.

The administration’s top scientists have said that quarantining all returning healthcare workers will discourage them from going to West Africa at all, and thus further the spread of the deadly virus.

Under looser guidelines issued Monday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, healthcare workers returning from the three countries at the heart of the outbreak – Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea – will be asked to let local public health officials monitor them. If they fall into a high-risk group, they will be asked to stay home until it is clear they do not have the disease.

State and local officials are still free to implement their own quarantine rules.

Shortly before his remarks to reporters, Obama spoke by telephone with medical workers in West Africa fighting the Ebola epidemic, the largest in history.

He said he also talked with Amber Vinson, one of two Texas nurses who contracted the disease after treating Thomas Eric Duncan, the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the U.S. Vinson has been declared disease-free.

Obama also said he planned to meet Wednesday with some returning health workers. Last week he met with Nina Pham, the other nurse who was sickened after treating Duncan and who has also recovered.

The meetings give Obama a chance to thank the workers but also an opportunity to visually reinforce his administration’s message that they should be treated as heroes, not pariahs.

Americans have led the fight against Ebola, Obama said Tuesday, and should continue to do so, in part by supporting the medical workers who are going overseas to help.

Harsh confinement policies at home might discourage the workers from doing so, he said.

Americans “don’t react just based on our fears,” he said, but rather on “facts and judgment and making smart decisions. That’s how we have built this country.”

After his remarks, Obama departed via Marine helicopter from the South Lawn of the White House, bound for Air Force One and an afternoon trip to Milwaukee to campaign for Democratic candidates in next week’s midterm elections.

For more coverage of the White House, follow @cparsons