Monrovia: Australia’s move to shut its borders to citizens of the countries worst-hit by the West African Ebola outbreak stigmatised healthy people and would make it harder to fight the disease, the affected countries said.
Australia’s ban on visas for citizens of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea – the first such ban by a developed nation – followed decisions by the US military to quarantine soldiers returning from an Ebola response mission and some US states to isolate aid workers. The United Nations said such measures could discourage vital relief work, making it harder to stop the spread of the deadly virus.
Careful approach: A health worker with a man who is suspected of being infected with Ebola. Photo: Washington Post
Sierra Leone called the Australian move draconian.
“It is discriminatory in that … it is not [going] after Ebola but rather it is … against the 24 million citizens of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea,” Information Minister Alpha Kanu said. “Certainly, it is not the right way to go.”
Targeted ban: Immigration Minister Scott Morrison and Prime Minister Tony Abbott. Photo: Andrew Meares
Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf urged Australia to reconsider its travel ban.
“Anytime there’s stigmatisation, there’s quarantine, there’s exclusion of people, many of whom are just normal, then those of us who are fighting this epidemic, when we face that, we get very sad,” she told a news conference.
The virus has killed almost 5000 people since March, mostly in those three countries.
The arrival of the disease in the United States has prompted fierce debate there and in other developed countries about the best measures to prevent its spread.
On guard: Ebola tracing co-ordinator John Mbayoh checks a baby’s temperature in Monrovia, Liberia. Photo: Getty Images
The World Health Organisation says overly restrictive quarantines and travel bans will put people off volunteering to go to Africa, where relief workers are needed to help improve a health system to deal with the disease.
“We desperately need international health workers … They are really the key to this response,” WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said.
Even African countries with no Ebola cases have been angered by policies being implemented in richer countries.
“Western countries are creating mass panic which is unhelpful in containing a contagious disease like Ebola,” said Ugandan government spokesman Ofwono Opondo. “If they create mass panic … this fear will eventually spread beyond ordinary people to health workers or people who transport the sick and then what will happen? Entire populations will be wiped out.”
Eighty-two people who had contact with a toddler who died of Ebola in Mali last week are being monitored, the WHO said, but no new cases have been reported there.
Mali became the sixth West African country to report a case of the disease. Senegal and Nigeria both stopped the virus by tracking down people who had had contact with those who brought it into their country and monitoring them for symptoms.
American soldiers returning from West Africa are being isolated, even if they show no symptoms and are not believed to have been exposed to the virus.
The army said Chief of Staff General Raymond Odierno ordered the 21-day monitoring period “to ensure soldiers, family members and their surrounding communities are confident that we are taking all steps necessary to protect their health”.
Australia has not recorded a case of Ebola despite a number of scares, and Prime Minister Tony Abbott has so far resisted repeated requests to send medical personnel to help battle the outbreak on the ground.
Adam Kamradt-Scott, of the University of Sydney’s Marie Bashir Institute for Infectious Diseases and Biosecurity, said the travel ban would do nothing to protect the country from Ebola while potentially having a negative public health impact by creating a climate of panic.
Medical professionals say Ebola is difficult to catch. It is spread through direct contact with bodily fluids from an infected person and not transmitted by asymptomatic people.
Reuters