Africa

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TIMES                 Oct. 25, 2014

By Charles Poladian

U.S. President Barack Obama again encouraged Americans to be “guided by the facts, not fear” in their assessments of Ebola virus disease as he discussed the first confirmed case in New York and the national response by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in his weekly address Saturday. Obama also mentioned the recoveries of Ashoka Mukpo and Nina Pham, who both tested negative for Ebola this week, and stressed the difficulty of contracting the virus.

WASHINGTON POST                                                                                   Oct. 25, 2014      
By Deneen L. Brown

Workers and volunteers face unease after flying to virus epicenters

Dr. David Schnabel, epidemic intelligence service officer with the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, works with database training of Ministry of Health staff at the Bo District Surveillance Office in Sierra Leone in August. (Gbessay Saffa)

"David Schnabel, a former Army doctor who lives in Baltimore, said he hasn’t talked much with people he doesn’t know about his five-week trip to Sierra Leone. Schnabel, who was working for the CDC in the hard-hit Bo District, returned on Sept. 29.

“'I can tell you I did not broadcast where I had been before or after I returned to strangers,” said Schnabel, who trained Sierra Leoneans on Ebola safety protocols rather than caring for patients. “I understood the emotional response to Ebola. To protect myself from any stigma, I consciously was careful who I told.'”

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UPDATE 2      U.S. nurse quarantined over Ebola criticizes her treatment and  airport temperaure reading

REUTERS    

By Jonathan Allen                                                                        Oct. 25, 2014

NEW YORK --Kaci Hickox, a nurse, returned on Friday from working with medical charity Doctors Without Borders in Sierra Leone and was placed in quarantine after arriving at Newark.

Hickox, who was transferred from the airport to a hospital where she was placed in isolation, described a confusing and upsetting experience at the airport and was worried the same treatment was in store for other American health workers trying to help.

"I ... thought of many colleagues who will return home to America and face the same ordeal," Hickox wrote in an article published on Saturday by The Dallas Morning News with the help of one of the newspaper's reporters. "Will they be made to feel like criminals and prisoners?"

In her article, Hickox ...said her temperature was normal when tested orally at the hospital, but had shown a fever when she was tested using a non-contact forehead scanner, which reflected the fact she was flustered and anxious.

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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.”