The US nurse who became the first person isolated in the United States under new mandatory quarantine rules has labelled her treatment a “frenzy of disorganisation”.
Kaci Hickox, who arrived at Newark airport in New Jersey on Friday, described hours of questioning by officials in protective gear and what she said was a misdiagnosis of fever followed by a transfer to a hospital isolation tent.
She said she worried about what was in store for other American health workers trying to help combat the epidemic that has killed thousands in West Africa.
“I … thought of many colleagues who will return home to America and face the same ordeal. Will they be made to feel like criminals and prisoners?” she wrote in an article published by The Dallas Morning News.
“I am scared that, like me, they will arrive and see a frenzy of disorganization, fear and, most frightening, quarantine,” wrote Ms Hickox, who was working for the medical charity Doctors Without Borders in Sierra Leone.
Ms Hickox’s quarantine came under a policy introduced by New York and New Jersey states on Friday, by which anyone arriving at John F Kennedy International Airport or Newark Liberty International Airport after having contact with patients in the Ebola-ravaged countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea must submit to a mandatory quarantine for 21 days.
Ms Hickox said she reported to immigration officials at the airport and was escorted to a quarantine office.
“One after another, people asked me questions. Some introduced themselves, some didn’t,” she said.
“One man, who must have been an immigration officer because he was wearing a weapon belt that I could see protruding from his white coveralls, barked questions at me as if I was a criminal.”
Ms Hickox said after six hours, eight police cars escorted her to the University Hospital in Newark.
“Sirens blared, lights flashed. Again, I wondered what I had done wrong. I had spent a month watching children die, alone. I had witnessed human tragedy unfold before my eyes. I had tried to help when much of the world has looked on and done nothing,” she said.
The quarantines were imposed after a New York City doctor, Dr Craig Spencer, was diagnosed with the disease on Thursday, days after returning home from working with patients in Guinea.
Mauritania closes border; Mali vows to keep border open
Meanwhile, Mauritania has closed its border with Mali to prevent the spread of Ebola, officials said, highlighting fears of further contagion in West Africa after a girl from Guinea died of the disease in Mali this week.
Earlier, Mali’s president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita said his country would not close its border with Guinea despite the girl’s case, which may have exposed many to the disease as she travelled hundreds of kilometres through Mali – including a stop in the capital Bamako – on public transport.
Health experts are rushing teams to Mali to help try to contain the outbreak in the sixth West African nation to record Ebola this year.
Senegal and Nigeria contained their outbreaks and been declared free of the disease but at least 4,922 people have died elsewhere, mainly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Reuters