America The Beautiful And America The Ugly

CAN you imagine any country in the world where the President would invite to his office and hug – publicly – a person who has just recovered from the most feared contagious disease in the world?

President Barack Obama has just done that. President Obama was photographed hugging Nina Pham, a Dallas nurse diagnosed with Ebola after caring for an infected patient in Texas. Nurse Pham is virus-free now and shortly after she left hospital, President Obama welcomed her to the Oval Office in Washington and hugged her.

President Obama has also dispatched his Ambassador to the United Nations, Ms Samantha Power, to Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, to see for herself, the devastation that Ebola is causing in those countries and to assess any new assistance that might be required from the United States. These demonstrations of support to the ravaged countries are extremely important, for Ms Power need not have gone to those countries at all. The US has already sent troops there, who are doing what they can to help establish Ebola control centres. The US effort is rather belated, of course, but there was – I repeat – no compelling reason why MS Power should go there herself. But her President believes that body language matters in this Ebola crisis.

Meanwhile, some Americans – misled by the cacophonous hysteria in the media, which is, in turn, fuelled by the cackling of politicians seeking office – are running away from those who have been on the same bus or airplane, or hospital building, or school-room, with anyone who has breathed the same air as someone who has stood within 20 years of someone who was born in Liberia or Guinea or Sierra Leone or Guinea, irrespective of whether he/she has visited his/her birthplace recently or not! That unthinking stigmatisation is the ugly side of America.

Because the US has a Federal system of government, state governments can undermine with one American hand, what the Federal Government is doing with the other. In this case, the US Federal Government wants to tackle the Ebola problem with a rational, scientific approach. It has told US citizens abroad that:

Ebola can only be contracted by touching a person who has already been infected

with, or died from, the disease. . . Human to human transmission [of Ebola] is only achieved by physical contact with a person who is acutely and gravely ill from the Ebola virus, or their body fluids”; such transmission “is almost exclusively among caregiver family members, or health care workers tending the very ill... If you are walking around, you are not infectious to others. You cannot contract Ebola by handling money, buying local bread or swimming in a pool. There is no medical reason to stop flights, close borders, restrict travel or close embassies, businesses or schools..... You will not contract Ebola if you do not touch a person dying from Ebola”.

Yet, some states in the US are implementing draconian measures against suspected Ebola 'carriers'. A US nurse was held in quarantine in New Jersey for seven hours,after returning to the US from Sierra Leone. The nurse, Kaci Hickox, said she was made “to feel like a criminal”.

New rules promulgated by the state governments of New York, New Jersey and Illinois, require a mandatory 21-day quarantine period for all health workers who have had contact with Ebola patients in West Africa and just returned to the US – irrespective of whether they are showing symptoms of the disease or not! Contrast that with the forthright statement by Ambassador Samantha Power, that “All returning US health workers should be treated like conquering heroes and not stigmatized for the tremendous work that they have done".

Ms Hickox herself slammed Governor Christie of New Jersey on CNN, pointing out that: “First of all, I don't think he's a doctor. Secondly, he's never laid eyes on me. I have been asymptomatic since I've been here. I feel physically completely strong [but] emotionally completely exhausted.” She called her mandatory quarantine – in a tent inside a hospital building – “completely unacceptable” and “not based on any clear public health evidence.”

The American Civil Liberties Union has demanded more information about how the state is forcing health care workers into quarantine, saying it has “serious constitutional concerns about the state abusing its powers”. Experts are also predicting that such brutal quarantines will hurt relief efforts and stigmatize health care workers. A top official of the US National Institutes of Health, Dr. Anthony Faucci, said “There are other steps to protect [the] American people, based on scientific evidence, that does not necessarily have to go so far as to possibly have [the] unintended consequences of dis-incentivizing health care workers.”

Ms Hickox herself has instructed lawyers to find out whether she can sue the state of New Jersey for infringing her fundamental human right with the brutal treatment meted out to her. And in

an opinion piece she wrote for the Dallas Morning News,Nurse Kaci Hickox, a nurse with degrees from the University of Texas at Arlington and the Johns Hopkins University, and who had been caring for Ebola patients while on assignment with Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Sierra Leone, said:

QUOTE: I am a nurse who has just returned to the U.S. after working with Doctors Without Borders in Sierra Leone - an Ebola-affected country. I have been quarantined in New Jersey. . . I am scared for those who will follow me. I am scared about how health care workers will be treated at airports when they declare that they have been fighting Ebola in West Africa. I am scared that, like me, they will arrive and see a frenzy of disorganization, fear and, most frightening, quarantine.

I arrived at the Newark Liberty International Airport around 1 p.m. on Friday, after a gruelling two-day journey from Sierra Leone. I walked up to the immigration official at the airport and was greeted with a big smile and a “hello.” I told him that I had travelled from Sierra Leone and he replied, a little less enthusiastically: “No problem. They are probably going to ask you a few questions.” He put on gloves and a mask and called someone. Then he escorted me to the quarantine office a few yards away....

One after another, people asked me questions. ...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. Two other officials asked about my work in Sierra Leone. One of them was from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. They scribbled notes in the margins of their form, a form that appeared to be inadequate for the many details they are collecting.

I was tired, hungry and confused, but I tried to remain calm. My temperature was taken using a forehead scanner and it read a temperature of 98. I was feeling physically healthy but emotionally exhausted. Three hours passed. No one seemed to be in charge. No one would tell me what was going on or what would happen to me.... I was hungry and thirsty and asked for something to eat and drink. I was given a granola bar and some water. I wondered what I had done wrong.

Four hours after I landed at the airport, an official approached me with a forehead scanner. My cheeks were flushed, I was upset at being held with no explanation. The scanner recorded my temperature as 101. The female officer looked smug. “You have a fever now,” she said. I explained that an oral thermometer would be more accurate and that the forehead scanner was recording an elevated temperature because I was flushed and upset. I was left alone in the room for another three hours.

At around 7 p.m., I was told that I must go to a local hospital. ... Eight police cars escorted me 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.

[At the hospital, a doctor who examined me said]: “There's no way you have a fever. Your face is just flushed.” My blood was taken and tested for Ebola. It came back negative.

I sat alone in the isolation tent and 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? I recalled my last night at the Ebola management centre in Sierra Leone. It was the hardest night of my life. I watched a young girl die in a tent, away from her family.

With few resources and no treatment for Ebola, we tried to offer our patients dignity and humanity in the face of their immense suffering... The U.S. must treat returning health care workers with dignity and humanity.