Quarantines imposed on travelers coming from Ebola-affected countries in West Africa who have had contact with the disease could discourage American health workers from going there to help fight the epidemic, a senior U.S. medical official warned on Sunday.
"I don't want to be directly criticizing the decision that was made but we have to be careful that there are unintended consequences," Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said of the measures imposed by New York, New Jersey and Illinois.
"The best way to stop this epidemic is to help the people in West Africa, we do that by sending people over there, not only from the U.S.A. but from other places," Fauci told NBC's "Meet the Press," adding such quarantines were "a little bit draconian.
The three states imposed 21-day mandatory quarantines in the last two days for anyone arriving with a risk of having contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea. They are the three West African countries that have borne the brunt of an epidemic that has killed nearly 5,000 people.
The policies were abruptly imposed after a New York City doctor was diagnosed with the disease on Thursday after coming home from treating patients in Guinea.
A nurse who returned on Friday through New Jersey's Newark airport after working in Sierra Leone with Ebola patients, strongly criticized the quarantine policy on Saturday, describing hours of questioning and then transfer to a hospital isolation tent, calling her treatment a "frenzy of disorganization.
READ MORE
No comments:
Post a Comment