Ebola and Quarantine

Governments all over the world are concerned about the health of their people especially with the advent of the Ebola Crisis in West Africa. Every nation is vigilant and some countries have trained personnel to respond in case of any eventual outbreak in their territories. Committees are formed to investigate and measures are put in place to monitor anyone returning from the Ebola Zone. Countries like China and Britain even had simulations to test their abilities to cope with an outbreak. At the onset of the Ebola crisis, Liberia shut down public services for three days as a measure to restrict movement or just quarantine people in general to avoid uncontrollable widespread of the virus. However these measures of quarantine or shutting down the whole government apparatuses to a standstill has economic toll on people and businesses: food shortages, rising prices, social isolation etc….

Nigeria’s success story of controlling the spread of the Ebola virus is a result of those draconic measures taken by government agencies to quarantine the first case, that of the infected Liberian civil servant that arrived in Lagos late August for a conference. Though, the virus claimed seven documented lives mostly the medics, it is amazing how Africa’s most populous country chalked that success. The lesson to learn in my opinion is to understand that Nigeria’s control over the spread of the virus could be attributable to the quarantines.

We also heard in the News of an infected Spanish nurse that returned to Madrid and was quickly quarantined by Spanish authorities to avoid the spread of the virus. So far there are no known new cases in Spain except for the woman’s husband, dog and others who she might have come into contact with and those people are being monitored at close range.

A UN official infected in Liberia and sent to Germany is also put in isolation or quarantine and undergoing treatment. Dr. Iris Minde, Head of Leipzig St. George Clinic said “as a result of the quarantine, there is no danger of infection for relatives, visitors or the public”.

It seems like quarantine approach is the easiest way to nations are able to monitor people who came into contact with infected people or the virus itself. The United States, having reported one Ebola death, have also taken quarantine measures to control a widespread of the disease. A few days ago, Governors of some States like New York and New Jersey have requested for stricter measures to quarantine returnees or anyone coming from the Ebola hot Zones into those States. However, there are numerous protests about this policy as it is claimed not to be scientifically proven that quarantine is the remedy to widespread. Scientists believe that anyone in contact with virus could be contagious if their viral load in bodily fluid is high. Based on this understanding of the nature of transmission of the disease, Doctors and other medics who volunteered in West Africa and are now returning to the US find it difficult to adhere to the new quarantine policy. Who knows if those returnees even developed immunity to the virus? Shouldn’t their blood or plasma sample be collected rather for research purposes? Draconic quarantine approaches worked in places like Nigeria, Liberia, Spain with symptomatic people, and the question is should those same measures be applied to asymptomatic returnees to the US or elsewhere?

 

 Retrieved: October 28, 2014, http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe1413139