‘Felt like a criminal’, says US nurse quarantined for Ebola
27 Oct 2014 5:33 AM IST
Kaci Hickox was the first person to enter a mandatory 21-day quarantine for medical staff returning to parts of the United States who may have had contact with Ebola patients in West Africa, the epicenter of the outbreak that has killed nearly 5,000 people.
The new rules took effect in New York and New Jersey on Friday, the same day Hickox returned.
‘This is not a situation I would wish on anyone, and I am scared for those who will follow me,’ Hickox wrote in The Dallas Morning News, saying she was showing no symptoms when she arrived back in the United States.
‘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.’Hickox, who landed at New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport after working with Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Sierra Leone, will be monitored at a hospital for 21 days, the known incubation period of Ebola.Her account recalled the ordeal that began with her ‘grueling’ two-day journey from Sierra Leone back to the United States.
Then, at the airport’s quarantine office in immigration, ‘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,’ Hickox said. Despite feeling ‘tired, hungry and confused,’ Hickox said she tried to remain calm during the three hours that passed in the office.
The new rules took effect in New York and New Jersey on Friday, the same day Hickox returned.
‘This is not a situation I would wish on anyone, and I am scared for those who will follow me,’ Hickox wrote in The Dallas Morning News, saying she was showing no symptoms when she arrived back in the United States.
‘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.’Hickox, who landed at New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport after working with Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Sierra Leone, will be monitored at a hospital for 21 days, the known incubation period of Ebola.Her account recalled the ordeal that began with her ‘grueling’ two-day journey from Sierra Leone back to the United States.
Then, at the airport’s quarantine office in immigration, ‘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,’ Hickox said. Despite feeling ‘tired, hungry and confused,’ Hickox said she tried to remain calm during the three hours that passed in the office.
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