Africa

NEW YORK TIMES               Oct. 25, 2014
by David W. Shin and Liz Robbins

The surprise decision by the governors of New York and New Jersey yesterday to impose a mandatory quarantine on persons who arrived at area airports and had contact with Ebola infected persons has touched off concern that it will deter people from volunteering to work in West Africa.

"Among medical professionals who have been fighting Ebola in West Africa, the restrictions only intensified the debate. While a few of those interviewed said an overabundance of caution was welcome, the vast majority said that restrictions like those adopted by New York and New Jersey could cripple volunteers’ efforts at the front lines of the epidemic."

" Dr. Rick Sacra, who contracted Ebola in Liberia and was flown back to the United States to be treated in September, said...many doctors and nurses who volunteered would spend about three weeks in Africa and then return to their regular jobs. The requirement that they be quarantined at home upon their return “will effectively double the burden on those people, on the loss of productive time,” Dr. Sacra said.

NEW YORK TIMES                    Oct. 24, 2014

by MARC SANTORA  

NEW YORK --The governors of New York and New Jersey announced Friday afternoon that they were ordering all people entering the country through two area airports who had direct contact with Ebola patients in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea to be quarantined.

The announcement comes one day after an American doctor, who had worked in Guinea and returned to New York City earlier in October, tested positive for Ebola and became the first New York patient of the deadly virus.

“A voluntary Ebola quarantine is not enough,” said Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York. “This is too serious a public health situation.”