Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/483436
Spec.MichaelO'dellPowers Spec. Jeffrey Neal Price Pvt. Dustin Rahming Nathan Scott Spec. Vincent Torres PV2Kevin Turner Sgt. Michael Wentzel Sgt. Jason C. Westlund Spec. Bill Wooden Spec. Candace Zepp COASTGUARD BM1Brett Bonner Petty Officer 2nd Class April M. Hambly AMT2Christopher Harris GM1Brandon P. Hayward BM2Anthony Longo E2Trevor A. Miller EM1Charly Ostrowski EM Nolan Schlereth P.O. 3 SN Jacob Schlereth ENS Trevor Siperek Petty Officer 2nd Class Har- rison Stanley Richard W. Summers, Jr. Ifyouhaveamother, father, son or daughter serving in the military and would like to include the person's name on this list, call 527-2153 or send an e-mail to clerk@ redbluffdailynews.com. If this person gets discharged from the military, call and we will remove the name from the list. Military FROMPAGE6 By Maria Cheng and Raphael Satter The Associated Press GENEVA In a delay that some say may have cost lives, the World Health Or- ganization resisted call- ing the Ebola outbreak in West Africa a public health emergency until last sum- mer, two months after staff raised the possibility and long after a senior manager called for a drastic change in strategy, The Associated Press has learned. Among the reasons the United Nations agency cited in internal delibera- tions: worries that declar- ing such an emergency — akin to an international SOS — could anger the Afri- can countries involved, hurt their economies or interfere with the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. Those arguments struck critics, experts and sev- eral former WHO staff as wrong-headed. "That's like saying you don't want to call the fire department because you're afraid the fire trucks will create a disturbance in the neighborhood," said Mi- chael Osterholm, a prom- inent infectious diseases expert at the University of Minnesota. In public comments, WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan has re- peatedly said the epidemic caught the world by sur- prise. "The disease was unex- pected and unfamiliar to everyone, from (doctors) and laboratory staff to gov- ernments and their citi- zens," she said in January. Last week, she told an au- dience in London that the first sign that West Africa's Ebola crisis might become a global emergency came in late July, when a consultant fatally ill with the disease flew from Liberia to a Ni- gerian airport. But internal documents obtained by AP show that senior directors at the health agency's headquar- ters in Geneva were in- formed of how dire the situ- ation was early on and held off on declaring a global emergency. Such an alert is meant to trigger a surge in outside help, or, as a WHO document put it, "ramps up political pressure in the countries affected" and "mobilizes foreign aid and action." When WHO experts dis- cussed the possibility of an emergency declaration in early June, one director viewed it as a "last resort." The delay in declaring an emergency was one of many critical problems that hob- bled the agency's ability to contain the epidemic. When aid agency Doctors With- out Borders warned Ebola was spiraling out of control, WHO contradicted it, even as WHO's own scientists called for backup. When WHO did send staffers to West Africa, they were of mixed caliber. Fellow re- sponders said many lacked Ebola experience; one WHO consultant who got infected with Ebola broke his own agency's protocol, putting others at risk and getting WHO kicked out of a hotel, the AP found. In an email Thursday, WHO said: "People often confuse the declaration of a Public Health Emergency of International Concern with our operational response. It is very different. WHO mounted a strong opera- tional response a year ago when we were notified the outbreak was Ebola." WHO is the only agency with the authority to lead a global response to health crises, by providing med- ical, laboratory and other support when there are out- breaks of unusual or new diseases. Its handling of the Ebola epidemic has been roundly criticized and led to a new call for reforms. The vacuum of leadership at WHO was so damaging the U.N. created the Mission for Ebola Emergency Response to take over the overall fight against the disease. Dr. Sylvie Briand, head of the pandemic and epi- demic diseases department at WHO, acknowledged that her agency made wrong de- cisions but said postponing the alert made sense at the time because it could have had catastrophic economic consequences. "What I've seen in gen- eral is that for developing countries it's sort of a death warrant you're signing," she said. As Ebola continued to spread in the summer, the situation on the ground grew increasingly desper- ate, with only a fraction of the needed treatment beds available in Liberia and Si- erra Leone. Some regions didn't even have enough soap and water; patients were literally dying out- side the gates of Ebola clin- ics as foreign mine workers evacuated and neighboring countries restricted travel. By the time WHO de- clared an international emergency, nearly 1,000 people were already dead. DISEASE Em ai ls s ho w UN h ea lt h ag en cy resisted declaring Ebola emergency JEROME DELAY — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE A woman being discharged from the Island Clinic Ebola treatment center in Monrovia, Liberia, is sprayed with disinfectant. By Jim Vertuno The Associated Press AUSTIN, TEXAS When Texas officials launched a massive public high school steroids testing program over fears of rampant dop- ing from the football fields to the tennis courts, they promised a model program for the rest of the country to follow. But almost no one did. And after spending $10 million testing more than 63,000 students to catch just a handful of cheaters, Texas lawmakers appear likely to defund the pro- gram this summer. If they do, New Jersey and Illinois will have the only statewide high school steroids testing programs left. Even those who pushed for the Texas program in 2007 now call it a colos- sal misfire, either a waste of money or too poorly de- signed to catch the drug us- ers some insist are slipping through the cracks. "I believe we made a huge mistake," said Don Hoo- ton, who started the Taylor Hooton Foundation for ste- roid abuse education after his 17-year-old son's 2003 suicide was linked to the drug's use, and was one of the key advocates in creat- ing the Texas program. Hooton believes the low number of positive tests doesn't mean Texas athletes are clean, only that they're not getting caught because of inadequate testing and loopholes that allow them to cheat the process. "Coaches, schools, and politicians have used the abysmal number of posi- tive tests to prove there's no steroid problem," Hoo- ton said. "What did we do here? We just lulled the pub- lic to sleep." Texas wasn't the first state to test high schoolers. New Jersey and Florida were first and Illinois started about the same time as Texas. But the Lone Star State employed its typical bigger-is-better swagger by pumping in mil- lions to sweep the state for cheaters. At the time, Texas had more than 780,000 pub- lic high school athletes, by far the most in the nation. A positive test would kick the star quarterback or point guard out of the lineup for at least 30 days. Schools across the coun- try closely watched Texas, said Don Colgate, director of sports and sports medi- cine at the National Feder- ation of State High School Associations. "Texas was going out in front in a big way," Colgate said. "(But) it's not a cheap process and they knew there were not going to do it on the scale of what Texas did." New Jersey and Illi- nois each spends about $100,000 annually testing a few hundred athletes. Flor- ida folded its $100,000 pro- gram in 2009. There were questions from the start whether Texas should go so big. The University Interscho- lastic League, the state's gov- erning body for high school sports, surveyed its member public schools in 2002 and the vast majority said testing should be a local decision. By 2007, headlines of per- formance-enhancing drug abuse in professional sports and a push from advocates like Hooton prodded law- makers to forge ahead and they pumped in $6 million for the first two years. Texas hired Drug Free Sport, which conducts test- ing for the NCAA, the NFL, Major League Baseball and the NBA, to randomly se- lect students, pull them out of class and have them supply a urine sample. The first 19,000 tests produced just nine confirmed cases of steroid use, with another 60 "protocol violations" for skipping the test. Few saw those numbers as good news of clean ath- letes or even as proof the program could be a success- ful deterrent. Most saw it as fodder for criticism that the state was wasting its money. And national momentum was ebbing. The economic downturn pinched state budgets. Other health is- sues, including heat-related deaths and head safety, jumped to the forefront. ATHLETICS Texas set to drop steroids testing program in public high schools BEN FOGLETT — THE PRESS OF ATLANTIC CITY Hillary Clinton was the keynote speaker at the American Camp Association, New York and New Jersey's Tri State CAMP Conference in Atlantic City, NJ., on Thursday. By Matthew Daly The Associated Press WASHINGTON The chair- man of a House committee investigating the deadly 2012 attacks in Benghazi formally requested Friday that Hillary Clinton turn over her email server for an independent review. Rep. Trey Gowdy, R- S.C., sent a letter request- ing that Clinton, a likely Democratic presidential candidate, turn over to the State Department in- spector general or other third party the server she used for official business while serving as secretary of state. The aim would be to have a third party deter- mine what records should be made public. "Though Secretary Clin- ton alone is responsible for causing this issue, she alone does not get to deter- mine its outcome," Gowdy said in a statement. His request to turn over the server is "in the interest of transparency for the American people," Gowdy said. Clinton has pledged that all her work-related email will be made public but has acknowledged deleting thousands of messages re- lated to personal matters. Clinton has said the server "will remain private." Gowdy set an April 3 deadline for Clinton and her lawyers to respond. If she declines to make the server available, "I will in- form the speaker of the House of Representatives so that he can use the full powers of the House to take the necessary steps to protect the best inter- ests of the American peo- ple," Gowdy wrote in a let- ter to Clinton's attorney, David Kendall. House Speaker John Boehner has not ruled out a vote in the full House to force Clinton to turn over the server if she declines to make it available. Clinton is considered the Democratic front-run- ner if she decides to seek the presidency, and the high-profile Republican investigations are likely to dog her in the run-up to the 2016 election. Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Beng- hazi panel, said Gowdy's letter seemed "designed to spark a fight with a po- tential presidential can- didate rather than follow the standard practice in congressional investiga- tions." Gowdy asks Clinton to turn over email server HOUSE COMMITTEE Please help sponsor a classroom subscription Call Kathy at (530) 737-5047 to find out how. ThroughtheNewspapersinEducation program, area classrooms receive the Red Bluff Daily News every day thanks to the generosity of these local businesses & individuals. •DR.ASATO&DR.MARTIN • FIDELITY NATIONAL TITLE CO. • WI N G S OLA R & W OO D EN ERGY • DOLLING INSURANCE • GUMM'S OPTICAL SHOPPE • OLIVE CITY QUICK LUBE • WA LM AR T • TEHAMA CO. DEPT. OF ED. • JOHN WHEELER LOGGING, INC. • DUDLEY'S EXCAVATING, INC. • ETZ LE R FIN ANCI AL & I NSU RA NCE • OLIVE CITY TAX PROFESSIONALS • PLACER TITLE COMPANY • AIRPORT AUTO REPAIR • GR EENWASTE OF TEHAMA • NORTH MAIN AUTOMOTIVE • QRC • RED BLUFF VISION CENTER • STEVE'S BACKHOE SERVICE • SCHOOL HOUSE MARKET THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING N EWS D AILY RED BLUFF TEHAMA COUNTY E V O I C E O F T E H A M A C O U N TY S I N C E 1 8 8 5 NEWSPAPERS NIE SATURDAY, MARCH 21, 2015 REDBLUFFDAILYNEWS.COM | NEWS | 7 B

