Ezriel Kornel, MD, FACS, was the first physician to successfully treat the first patient to survive Legionnaires' disease in 1978. He commented on the current outbreak, according to an article on PIX 11.
Dr. Kornel is a neurosurgeon and assistant professor of neurosurgery at Weill Cornell Medical College (N.Y.). He treated the patient with Legionnaires' disease at Washington Hospital Center in Washington D.C. in 1978.
The Bronx has recently experienced an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease, with 115 documented cases and 12 deaths.
Dr. Kornel cautioned that politics should not be a factor in dealing with this disease after stories hit that Mayor Bill de Blasio and Governor Andrew Cuomo were disagreeing about how to handle dealing with the outbreak.
Dr. Kornel expressed unease over the fact that so many people have already died from the disease, as it is now a known disease, unlike in 1978.