--- title: Ebola Outbreak: CDC Director Tom Frieden Says Time Running Out description: The CDC says more needs to be done to fight Ebola before it's too late canonical: https://time.com/3257769/ebola-outbreak-west-africa-cdc/ author: Alexandra Sifferlin article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-09-02T17:27:06.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:00:46.671Z article:section: Health og:title: Ebola Outbreak: CDC Director Tom Frieden Says Time Running Out og:description: The CDC says more needs to be done to fight Ebola before it's too late og:url: https://time.com/3257769/ebola-outbreak-west-africa-cdc/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8766d528aa047260/6986a1b1e8524b64be60482d/ebola.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3500 og:image:height: 1969 og:image:alt: A burial team in protective clothing retrieves the body an Ebola victim from an isolation ward in the West Point neighborhood of Monrovia, Liberia. og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Ebola Outbreak: CDC Director Tom Frieden Says Time Running Out twitter:description: The CDC says more needs to be done to fight Ebola before it's too late twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8766d528aa047260/6986a1b1e8524b64be60482d/ebola.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Window to Stop Ebola Outbreak Is 'Closing Quickly,' Official Warns > Sponsored content. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's weekday health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free weekday newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=4aeaba05-c2a3-411b-9915-243ddf1c23ca&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola [Watch (HLS stream): Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/G194AmTC.m3u8) (2:32)  _Published 2014-08-13. Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola_ by [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) ## Alexandra Sifferlin Sep 2, 2014 5:27 PM UTC  A burial team in protective clothing retrieves the body of an Ebola victim from an isolation ward in the West Point neighborhood of Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, on Aug. 28, 2014 A burial team in protective clothing retrieves the body of an Ebola victim from an isolation ward in the West Point neighborhood of Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, on Aug. 28, 2014 Daniel Berehulak—The New York TImes/Redux by [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) ## Alexandra Sifferlin Sep 2, 2014 5:27 PM UTC The window of opportunity to stop the Ebola outbreak in West Africa is “closing quickly,” a top health official said Tuesday. “The number of cases is so large, the epidemic is so overwhelming and it requires an overwhelming response,” Dr. Tom Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told reporters Tuesday after returning to the U.S. Monday from a trip to the affected countries. Despite the efforts of health workers from the affected countries and elsewhere, cases of Ebola will continue to increase, Frieden said. Moments after his remarks, an aid group announced that another American doctor fighting the outbreak in Liberia has been infected. Groups like Doctors Without Borders that are treating patients are overwhelmed by the high number of cases, and have had to turn away infected people because of lack of space. Frieden said he saw patients lying on the ground in some West Africa clinics. He stressed that Ebola is a global problem, and that closing off affected countries like Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone — many airlines have stopped flying there — will only worsen the outbreak by cutting off access to needed supplies. “Getting supplies and people in is a big challenge,” Frieden said. “The more the world isolates and stops contact with these countries, the harder it will be to stop the outbreak.” ## Transcript This Ebola outbreak is unprecedented. This is definitely a marathon and not a sprint. The bugs have evolved. The outbreak has gotten bigger. We are only as strong as the weakest link, and we have learned from Ebola that West Africa was a very weak link. [ MUSIC ] There's small clinics, these are like one room places where sick people might go in their house with maybe an auxiliary nurse as some one who has a little bit of medical training, but defiantly not the same standards that we would have here in the US. We're facing 3 main threats. The first is the threat of new organisms. It was coming and spreading in different places. The second is drug- resistant bacteria, and the third are intentionally created organisms. What we do in an outbreak response is continuously see how can we make it better. The exercises we've gone through both, re- evaluating our own protocols but also understanding what the public and governmental responses are has really helped us understand. How to take care of these patients in the larger context of our healthcare systems. And, those who are in the building, I would urge you to come down to either the ops team room, or the, When designing a unit that is designed to accept patients with serious communicable diseases, like Ebola, there are ways to design a unit so that it's function. Functional. Any hospital that can isolate a patient in a single patient room with a bathroom and can follow our infection control recommendations is capable of safely caring for a patient with Ebola. And we've tried to encourage every single hospital in the country to have an antibiotic stewardship program to improve antibiotic prescribing practices. There is a concern about fatigue as we go on that, the CDC other groups have sort of ramping up now to try to surge resources into the area. What we're also realizing is, we need to be able to maintain that surge for many months to keep the pressure on to completely control the outbreak. Time will tell in the next few weeks if we can start to see those numbers going in the right direction. Fewer new cases each day or each week. The single most important thing to understand about protecting Americans from Ebola is that can best be done by stopping it at the source in Africa. Its normal to be scared of something as deadly as Ebola and for the general public I really hope we can never let our fear undermine our compassion. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3257769/ebola-outbreak-west-africa-cdc/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3257769/ebola-outbreak-west-africa-cdc/"},"headline":"Window to Stop Ebola Outbreak Is 'Closing Quickly,' Official Warns","datePublished":"2014-09-02T17:27:06.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T08:00:46.671Z","description":"The CDC says more needs to be done to fight Ebola before it's too late","url":"https://time.com/3257769/ebola-outbreak-west-africa-cdc/","keywords":["Infectious Disease","CDC","Sierra Leone","doctors without borders","WHO","ebola","Guinea","Liberia","Ebola outbreak","MSF"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8766d528aa047260/6986a1b1e8524b64be60482d/ebola.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Alexandra Sifferlin","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8766d528aa047260/6986a1b1e8524b64be60482d/ebola.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"A burial team in protective clothing retrieves the body an Ebola victim from an isolation ward in the West Point neighborhood of Monrovia, Liberia.","caption":"A burial team in protective clothing retrieves the body of an Ebola victim from an isolation ward in the West Point neighborhood of Monrovia, the capital of Liberia on Aug. 28, 2014.","creditText":"Daniel Berehulak—The New York TImes/Redux","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/infectious-disease/","name":"Infectious Disease"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3257769/ebola-outbreak-west-africa-cdc/","name":"Window to Stop Ebola Outbreak Is 'Closing Quickly,' Official Warns"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola","description":"Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/G194AmTC/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2014-08-13T23:41:12.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/G194AmTC.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/3257769/ebola-outbreak-west-africa-cdc/","duration":"PT2M32S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/3257769/ebola-outbreak-west-africa-cdc/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```