AN EXPERT DESCRIBES NON-STUPID WAYS TO USE EBOLA QUARANTINES

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Chris Christie and Andrew Cuomo recently decided to quarantine medical workers who have come in contact with Ebola, despite many doctors and health experts telling them that their strategy is dumb. Ted Cruz and Rick Perry have also advocated for more fear-based isolation strategies. Doctors keep stressing calm, and explaining that American medical workers need to be able to travel to and from places like Liberia freely in order to fight the epidemic, and politicians keep itching to start quarantining everyone who has ever coughed.

Still, holding centers and isolation zones are are a fact of life in places like Liberia, and they need to be used carefully and correctly. I talked to Dr. Susan McLellan, a professor of both clinical and tropical medicine at Tulane University’s School of Medicine, who has also worked extensively in both Haiti and Rwanda. She told me what deceptively simple but effective things can be done, and why those things aren’t so simple in developing parts of Africa. She also told me about how fear can make everything worse.

VICE: What can holding centers in developing parts of the world can do to help stop the spread of infectious diseases?
Dr. Susan McLellan: In less developed parts of the world, it’s particularly difficult because copious running water, paper towels, and things like that are not necessarily easily available, so that makes a real difference. What places that are establishing treatment units are trying to set up is availability of heavily chlorinated water for cleaning as well as lots of personal protective equipment, and that ends up being the basics, as well as a way to feed people who are being admitted.