Dr. Richard Besser, the chief health and medical editor at ABC News, is in Monrovia, Liberia monitoring the progress in fighting West Africa's Ebola outbreak.


He's spent his professional life studying infectious disease, and told News 8 he's not too surprised to see a case here in the U.S.


In fact, in telephone interview Tuesday night, he warned there very likely will be other cases.


"You can become infected with Ebola, and it can take up to 21 days before you can develop any symptoms. So it's very easy for someone to get infected in West Africa — where I am — and hop on a plane and come to the United States and then develop symptoms," he said. "That's why hospitals in the United States were asked to be on the alert."


"Being meticulous in the hospital there — to make sure that the patient doesn't spread the disease, or health care workers don't carry it from the patient's room to other areas — is very important," Besser added. "The other half of that is really basic shoe leather epidemiology and public health. Going out and finding every person that he had contact with while he was sick, and then tracking them and following them every day... calling them and see: 'Do you have a temperature?' If you have a fever, you come in, you're isolated, and you're tested. If you do those steps, the disease doesn't spread."


Besser noted that Ebola is a very difficult disease to contract, and he predicted nowhere near the problem containing it in this country that doctors have experienced in West Africa.


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