US health officials, including former representatives of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on the 1st of June opposed a congressional plan to treat Americans who have been exposed to Ebola in Kenya or in European Union countries, Reuters reports.
The officials, including infectious disease specialist Krutika Kuppalli, emergency medicine doctors Debra Houry and Craig Spencer, and epidemiologist Anne Schuchat, said in an open letter that such an approach would be a departure from generally accepted medical repatriation practices and would pose serious risks.
The letter says the planned approach poses serious clinical, ethical, operational and legal risks. Experts have said such measures would deter aid workers from traveling to the affected areas, and thus jeopardize the international response to the outbreak.
“At a time when outbreak response efforts are already strained, this is a dangerous precedent,” the letter’s authors wrote.
They noted that they are concerned about diverting resources to build ad-hoc quarantine, isolation and treatment infrastructure
in other countries instead of directly using the necessary resources to control the outbreak at its source.
In late May, Washington announced that it would set up a quarantine camp in Kenya to quarantine US citizens who have been in contact with the Ebola virus, and if people develop symptoms, they will not be taken home, but will be sent to a third country. The administration of US President Donald Trump is thus trying to ensure that there are no cases of Ebola in the country.
A plan to send Americans who have been exposed to Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda to Kenya has faced fierce opposition from Kenyans. A Kenyan court has temporarily halted plans to set up a quarantine camp, responding to a claim that such facility would pose a public health risk.
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