And what prevents the doc from asking the question???
You’ve obviously never been in a big city emergency room.
The doctor is probably the last in the chain to see the patient, and that’s only after the patient has been sitting there for hours after having given his information to some uncomprehending person who is sitting behind the desk watching the latest episode of her favorite soap. All that information is what gets passed down the chain and what the subsequent people - nurses or doctors - use to make their decisions.
The doctor - when the info got to him or her - acted on that basis. Also, the Liberian community is about 10,000 strong in North Texas, so the emergency room is probably used to Liberians, and if the desk clerk didn’t ask about his travels or he didn’t tell them (his family says he did, but I’m not so sure), there was no reason for the medical staff to ask. They all base it on information at the start of the chain.
Not a good system, in my opinion, because the admitting clerks are not medical professionals at any level and furthermore are very low-skilled (at least, in a general hospital). If they were hired from welfare to work, I congratulate them, but they need better training and also a more patient-friendly and less hostile attitude. They never even look away from the waiting room TV while they’re entering patient data.