I know no more about the Ebola crisis than you, but I served for years on a medical center foundation board, and was often briefed by the hospital administrator. A few years back, she told us her current internal campaign was to convince medical staff to wash their hands before and after patient contact in her hospitals.

That’s right: “WASH YOUR HANDS!”

If basic sanitation instruction and follow-through has been so poor in our hospitals that medical staff doesn’t know enough to consistently wash their hands, it’s not too much of a leap to understand why protocols for handling of suspected Ebola patients are not being properly implemented.