Ebola third on list of urgent health concerns in U.S.: poll

Ebola tops obesity, cancer and diabetes in a new poll that asks Americans what the most urgent health problem facing the U.S. is today.

Gallup says about one in six Americans cited the deadly virus at the nation’s top health problem, putting it third behind the cost of health care and insurance, at 19 percent, and access to health coverage, at 18 percent.

Issues toward the bottom of the list include the flu, mental illness and AIDS.

Gallup conducted its poll while one of the four people to be diagnosed with Ebola was still being treated, although two Dallas nurses who contracted the virus had been cured.

Pollsters said the virus, which claimed a Sierra Leone man Monday who lived in Maryland and contracted the disease while helping patients in his native country, is likely to join a series of health scares that have popped up and then fallen off the list of urgent concerns in following years. Other such episodes include the bird flu scare in 2005 and H1N1 virus in 2009, Gallup said.

Martin Salia, who died Monday at a treatment center in Nebraska, and Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian man who died in Texas on Oct. 10, succumbed to Ebola after their treatment came at too late a stage of their infection. Overall the problem in the U.S. has been minimal, while Ebola has claimed about 5,000 lives in West Africa.

“Ebola may not be the dominant news story it was a month ago, but it is still on the minds of Americans, 17 percent of whom cite it when asked to name the top health problem facing the U.S,” the polling company said. “Still, Gallup’s history of asking this question strongly suggests that without continued incidents of Americans catching the virus on U.S. soil, this flare of concern will be temporary.”