The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has an alarming history of failure when it comes to protecting the health of Americans, says Betsy McCaughey, chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infectious Deaths and former lieutenant governor of New York.
"This bungling of Ebola was not an aberration," McCaughey said Friday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on
Newsmax TV, referring to the CDC's initial inability to contain the deadly virus in the United States.
"In fact, they have been failing at the center's core mission, which is protecting the American people from contagious disease and other types of disease threats."
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McCaughey pointed to legislation that was passed after the 9/11 terror attacks at New York City's World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.
"After 9/11, Congress passed a law requiring the CDC to establish a national stockpile of medical supplies in the event we would have a bioterrorism attack or even a natural disaster," McCaughey said, adding that it didn't happen.
"When we had a swine flu problem in 2009, they used up the supplies and never replenished the stockpile."
As well, the CDC has been unable to stop the problem of infectious diseases being spread in hospitals, according to McCaughey.
"Millions of American lives are at stake. Two million Americans, at least, get these terrible hospital infections each year and 75,000 people die from them every year," she said.
"The CDC has really dropped the ball on trying to prepare hospitals to stop these infections."
Legionnaire's Disease, which spreads from the infrastructures of aging buildings, is another.
"In older buildings, the pipes become contaminated with this bacteria called legionella. In Europe, buildings routinely test for it because it's not hard to eradicate," McCaughey said. "There are many methods [to detect it]. The fact is, you've got to know you have it, but the CDC has taken the brainy position that nobody should do anything about it until there's a tragedy in their building.
"We saw vets die at the Pittsburgh VA because of legionella. It's a kind of pneumonia you get from this bacteria. It should never have happened."
McCaughey noted that the CDC is requesting $161 million to eradicate polio.
"Sounds good, right? However, it's already been eradicated. There were only 350 cases worldwide last year and they were very far away," she said.
"That's twice what they're spending trying to protect us from superbugs in the hospitals because they're not doing their job."