Senator Lamar Alexander is visiting Vanderbilt University Medical Center on Wednesday, to meet with Tennessee Department of Health (TDH) and Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) experts to discuss potential local, regional and global implications of the Ebola virus outbreak.
At a recent hearing committee hearing on Ebola, the senator said the nation’s leaders “must take the deadly, dangerous threat of Ebola as seriously as they take ISIS.” Senator Alexander said the spread of the disease requires a more urgent response from the United States and other countries, calling Ebola “one of the most explosive, dangerous, deadly epidemics in modern times.”
Senator Alexander will participate in a short roundtable conversation with public health officials from the TDH and VUMC physician-scientists to discuss Tennessee’s emergency preparedness.
The senator will also tour the lab of VUMC virologist James Crowe, M.D., Ann Scott Carell Professor and professor of Pediatrics, whose research centers around efforts to develop drugs that protect against the Ebola virus.
Senator Alexander will then see the personal protective equipment that is worn when treating or working among Ebola patients.