Obama applauds Ebola volunteers
October 28, 2014
On Tuesday, President Barack Obama said the United States would not shy away from the battle against Ebola and publicly thanked the US volunteers who traveled to West Africa to fight the disease and should be "applauded, thanked and supported."
He added that he hoped that mandatory quarantines imposed by certain US states and the military on returning volunteers would not discourage aid workers from heading overseas, and that any such policies should be firmly grounded in science.
Obama's comments came as one US nurse, Amber Vinson, was released from the hospital, having been cured of Ebola after contracting it from a patient who traveled to Texas from Liberia.
Draconian policies
Not every announcement was positive on Tuesday. Policies aimed at controlling the spread of the Ebola virus have been criticized as draconian and impinging upon human rights, in particular the obligatory quarantines mentioned by Obama and a blanket ban in Australia on travel from Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.
The country has completely shut its borders to travelers from the three worst-hit countries, a move Sierra Leonean Information Minister Alpha Kanu called "discriminatory," saying it did not target the virus but rather "the 24 million citizens of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea," according to the news agency Reuters.
Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf described Australia's ban as "stigmatization," and even officials from African nations not hit by the outbreak are condemning such responses as counterproductive.
"Western countries are creating mass panic, which is unhelpful in containing a contagious disease like Ebola," Ugandan government spokesman Ofwono Opondo said.
Dissuading volunteers
According to the World Health Organization, such policies will decrease the number of health workers volunteering to go to West Africa. Foreign doctors and nurses are desperately needed resources that are "key to this response,"WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said.
More than 5,000 foreign volunteers are necessary at any one time, as they must rotate regularly.
Kaci Hickox, a US nurse who returned from Sierra Leone last Friday, was forcibly quarantined in New Jersey after briefly registering a fever, despite showing no other symptoms of the virus and testing negative for it. She decried her treatment as infringing on her right to due process, according to civil rights lawyer Norman Siegel.
He also announced Hickox's plans to sue New Jersey, saying the state's newly implemented quarantine policy provided no rational reason for confining returnees from West Africa who are asymptomatic. Siegel further denounced the state government's actions, adding that "policy should be driven by medical fact, not fear."
The largest outbreak of Ebola in recorded history has claimed nearly 5,000 lives since it began in March.
es/mkg (AP, AFP, Reuters)