US Ebola nurse treated as ‘criminal’

An Ebola nurse who has just returned from Sierra Leone slams the US government for a mandatory 21-day quarantine despite testing negative for the virus.

Kaci Hickox said in an article on Saturday that she was “made to feel like criminal,” after she was placed in quarantine at a New Jersey hospital upon her return.

On Friday, New Jersey governor Chris Christie and New York governor Andrew Cuomo announced a new policy, which requires those who had contact with Ebola sufferers to go through mandatory isolation for 21 days.

“This is not a situation I would wish on anyone, and I am scared for those who will follow me,” Hickox wrote in the article.

Hickox, who is a volunteer nurse with Doctors Without Borders, said she was held upon her arrival at the airport where she was questioned for hours by officials wearing protective clothes.

“I sat alone in the isolation tent and thought of many colleagues who will return home to America and face the same ordeal,” she wrote. “Will they be made to feel like criminals and prisoners?”

The governors made the decision a day after Dr. Craig Spencer tested positive for Ebola upon returning to New York after treating patients in Guinea.

Dr. Spencer, a physician for the humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders, became the fourth person diagnosed with the disease in the US and the first in its largest city.

There is currently no known cure for Ebola, which is a form of hemorrhagic fever with diarrhea, vomiting and bleeding as its symptoms.

The epidemic has already killed 4,922 out of the 10,141 known cases in eight countries, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

NT/NT