Australia Visa Ban for Ebola-affected Countries Is Criticized
by VOA News October 28, 2014
Humanitarian groups in Australia are criticizing the government's policy to impose a blanket ban on visas for citizens of the three West African nations affected by the Ebola virus outbreak.
The new policy cancels non-permanent or temporary visas for travelers from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
Permanent visa holders who have not yet arrived in Australia are being asked to submit to a 21-day quarantine period.
Announced by Immigration Minister Scott Morrison, the policy makes Australia the first wealthy nation to close its immigration doors in response to the Ebola outbreak.
Despite some suspected cases, medical authorities say there have been no confirmed Ebola cases in Australia.
In response, Sierra Leone Information Minister Alpha Kanu said on Tuesday that Australia's move was "too draconian." Kanu said that measures at Sierra Leone's Freetown airport had successfully prevented anyone flying out of the country with Ebola.
The visa ban has triggered widespread criticism from aid groups and professional health workers who call the response to the outbreak 'narrow."
Health workers said the country has monitoring and quarantine policies in place that will protect against Ebola's spread, without stoking public fears over travel bans.
WHO response
The World Health Organization (WHO) has recommended against imposing travel or trade bans on the affected nations, arguing that those nations are in need of international help, not isolation, to defeat the outbreak.
The WHO said on Tuesday that it has been difficult to get across its simple message that people who do not display symptoms of Ebola are not contagious and cannot transmit the disease to others.
WHO spokesman Tarek Jasarevic exhibited a bit of frustration when he repeated the U.N. health agency's recommendation advising against mandatory quarantine.
Jasarevic said health workers who go to West Africa to fight Ebola know how to monitor themselves for symptoms of the disease when they return home.
"We desperately need international health workers. We keep calling for health workers,' Jasarevic said. 'They are really the key to this response. And these people should not be treated when coming home in a way that they would be stigmatized by the rest of the population."
However, similar to Australia, several other countries in Africa and the Caribbean have toughened entry rules or banned visas for travelers from the three worst-affected countries.
US, UN response
The U.S. government has drawn up new health rules calling for returning medics to be monitored for symptoms of Ebola, not placed in quarantine.
But the states of New York, New Jersey and Illinois are standing by their decisions to quarantine health workers for the duration of the 21-day incubation period.
U.S. President Barack Obama and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon have appealed to Australia to send personnel to fight the spreading Ebola virus.
So far Australia has donated aid but not medical workers. The government said it resisted sending personnel because of the long, 30-hour journey back to Australia for ill patients.
The WHO said it feared the quarantine measures could put people off volunteering to go to Africa.
'This is not an African crisis ... it is a global crisis,' said Kim, who was visiting Ethiopia.
'We'll need a steady state of at least 5,000 health workers from outside the region, ... Those health workers cannot work continuously, there needs to be a rotation,' Kim said. 'So we will need many thousands of health workers over the next months to a year to bring this epidemic under control.'
The three worst-hit countries - Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea - are sorely lacking in medical infrastructure and funds due to a series of interlinked civil wars.
Nurse released from hospital
In the fight against Ebola in the U.S., the second Texas nurse to contract the virus was released from the hospital Tuesday.
Officials at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, where Amber Vinson, 29, was treated, said tests show she is now Ebola-free.
In a press conference Tuesday afternoon, Vinson thanked God and her family in aiding her recovery from Ebola. 'I'm so grateful to be well,' she said.
But Vinson said that 'while this is a day for celebration and gratitude,' she asked that the country 'not lose focus' on the thousands of families who continue to labor under the burden of Ebola in West Africa.
Vinson is one of two Dallas, Texas, nurses to become infected with Ebola after caring for Liberian patient Thomas Eric Duncan, who died of Ebola on October 8.
The other nurse, Nina Pham, was declared Ebola-free last week and was released from the Maryland hospital where she was being treated.
Americans' fears of Ebola grew after the nurses were diagnosed following Duncan's death.
A nurse forced into quarantine in New Jersey after returning from treating Ebola patients in West Africa is now back in her home state of Maine.
Maine officials said Kaci Hickox is expected to quarantine herself at home through the 21-day maximum Ebola incubation period. But her lawyer said she does not need to be in isolation because she shows no symptoms, so it is unclear how strict she plans to be.
She had described the way she was treated in New Jersey as 'inhumane.'
Hickox was the first person to be quarantined under New Jersey's new policy requiring isolation for all health care workers returning from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone - the three countries hardest hit by Ebola.
1 US Ebola patient
The lone patient now being treated for Ebola in the United States is a New York doctor, Craig Spencer, who was diagnosed last Thursday. Spencer had worked with Doctors Without Borders, treating Ebola patients in Guinea.
Also in New York, health officials said a 5-year-old boy from Guinea who was tested for Ebola turned out to have a fever because of a respiratory infection.
The Swiss agency that regulates new drugs said Tuesday it has approved an application for a clinical trial with an experimental Ebola vaccine at the Lausanne University Hospital, The Associated Press reported.
Swissmedic said the trial will be conducted among 120 volunteer participants with support from the U.N. World Health Organization.
The experimental vaccine is to be initially administered on healthy volunteers who will be sent as medical staff to fight the Ebola epidemic in West Africa.
Ebola has infected more than 10,000 people and killed nearly 5,000 since December, the WHO reported.
Ron Corben contributed to this report from Bangkok. Lisa Schlein contributed to this report from Geneva. Some material for this report came from Reuters and AP.
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