His own country wouldn't take him back.
An American doctor exposed to Ebola in Congo was sent to Prague for quarantine. His grandmother wants to know why.
Delores Stottlemyer is 96 years old and lives in Florida. She called me after seeing me on CNN:
She was upset. She wasn’t ranting. She was careful, almost apologetic. But she had a question she couldn’t let go of. Here’s a short clip of our conversation:
Her grandson, Dr. Patrick LaRochelle, has spent most of his career in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He’s 46, an internist and pediatrician, and he works at Centre Medical Evangelique Bunia Hospital in eastern Congo with his wife, Anna, a nurse practitioner. They have three children.
Dr. LaRochelle treated patients with Ebola. He wasn’t infected. But because he’d been exposed, he needed 3 weeks of monitoring in a facility that could handle a high-consequence infection if he got sick. So he was sent to Bulovka Hospital in Prague, not to the United States.
“I wonder why President Trump wouldn’t let him come here,” Stottlemyer told me. “He is a U.S. citizen. And we have plenty of places in this country where he could have been.”
She’s right that the facilities exist. The U.S. has 13 federally designated Regional Emerging Special Pathogen Treatment Centers (RESPTCs). Nebraska’s National Quarantine Unit alone has 20 single-occupancy rooms with negative air pressure, built for exactly this purpose.
But the Trump administration has made its position clear. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week: “We cannot and will not allow any cases of Ebola to enter the United States.” The administration’s plan is to quarantine exposed Americans at a facility in Kenya and send anyone who tests positive to Europe for treatment. A Kenyan court has since blocked the facility in Kenya.
Dr. LaRochelle isn’t even sick. He’s asymptomatic, sitting in an isolation chamber in Prague, waiting out the clock. The Czech Republic took him in. His own country wouldn’t.
This is the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola — no approved vaccine, no specific treatment. As of May 28th, the DRC has reported over 1,000 suspected and confirmed cases and more than 200 deaths. The WHO declared it a public health emergency of international concern on May 17th.
Dr. LaRochelle has been doing this work for years. He was evacuated once before, in 2018, for a previous Ebola exposure. He went back. “He has a religious commitment,” Stottlemyer said. “Always he wanted to help other people.”
His colleague, Dr. Peter Stafford, actually contracted Ebola and was evacuated to Berlin in critical condition. Stafford’s wife and four children are being monitored.
“I hate to say anything bad about our government,” Stottlemyer said. She wasn’t trying to make trouble. She just wanted to understand how her grandson could give his career to treating people in one of the most dangerous places on earth, and when he needed to come home for three weeks of monitoring — in a facility built for exactly that — the answer was no.