In the past few days, people from many walks of life have opined about a possible ban on traveling out of West Africa.
Some have said that stopping planes from landing in the U.S. wouldn’t stop people from going to other countries and then flying here. Others have stated that doing so would limit the amount of foreign aid that heads into countries like Liberia to help them with the outbreak.
Politicians have called for a travel ban, only to be chastised in the media by others who disagree.
The basic plan for any potentially deadly disease, and certainly a deadly hemorrhagic virus like Ebola, centers around containment. Control the affected population in a designated area, provide the resources needed to treat those exposed, and help to extinguish the infection at its target location.
We have seen how hospitals in the U.S. have dealt with this issue. Queen’s Medical Center chose early quarantine as soon as someone arrived with a possible case, which fortunately proved unrelated to Ebola.
Then there was the debacle of how a hospital in Dallas handled ebola patient Thomas Duncan, who later died. First, he was sent home from the ER. Then he was admitted and hospital personnel were not prepared with appropriate protective gear, resulting in not one, but two nurses testing positive for Ebola. One even flew to Cleveland after contacting the CDC with concerns, exposing other people to the possibility of infection.
What should have happened? Quarantine.
Control the infection by limiting any contact with infected individuals.
Which gets back to the whole issue of the travel ban. Nigeria imposed one on people from Liberia after someone arrived sick with Ebola. Thus Nigeria was able to eradicate the Ebola infection from its borders.
The way this virus spreads is through direct contact with infectious body fluids. The only effective way to prevent this is to restrict travel from the countries where Ebola is raging.
In the medical journal Lancet, a new statistical analysis estimates two to eight people infected with Ebola will depart from Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone via commercial flights, every month until the infection is controlled.
Given our experience with handling people who have Ebola, that is too many.
In Spain, a woman who contracted the illness had recently returned home from West Africa. She clearly had exposure and her subsequent travel back to Spain never should have happened.
Stopping people from flying out of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea is the answer. This does not have to restrict medical supplies from coming into these countries. A concerted effort from the World Health Organization could allow for certain exceptions to allow medical personnel and equipment to be sent to the affected areas.
Even the countries themselves have been begging for additional resources, like protective equipment, IV fluids, even body bags.
It seems like there has been such an effort to screen at American and British airports that the emphasis is on what do to if it arrives, not how to help prevent Ebola from coming here in the first place.
The only way to do that is to help the countries themselves manage the epidemic. To prevent having to quarantine people in the U.S. once they’ve arrived, provide adequate facilities in the host countries to keep the infection from spreading.
It is not a coincidence that the medical infrastructure in the countries most affected by Ebola is severely lacking.
Setting up temporary hospitals, like the Red Cross has done throughout the world during other natural disasters, would allow for the treatment of more than just the foreigners who acquired the infection abroad.
This would become the basis for developing the infrastructure needed to assist with the medical care of the people who live in the countries most affected.
If all the additional resources currently being spent on checking temperatures of people in airports when they arrive here were instead spent on providing assistance — either monetary or with medical supplies — to the areas hardest hit by this infectious disease disaster, then the world would be in a better position to control the epidemic.
Contain the areas that are hardest hit, and provide them with enough medical resources so that people won’t need to leave to find help. It would be available in their own backyard.
That’s the way to cure Ebola. Think of this as an infection that we need to address throughout the world.
