Ebola Quarantine Ordered for Relief Workers Returning to North Carolina

Photo Credit: Zoom Dosso / AFP / Getty

Photo Credit: Zoom Dosso / AFP / Getty

By Reuters.

Health officials in North Carolina said on Sunday they will require missionaries and others coming home after working with people infected with Ebola in Africa to be placed in quarantine.

The quarantine is set to last for three weeks from the last exposure to someone infected in the West African Ebola outbreak, which is centred in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, the officials said.

Missionaries from the North Carolina-based Christian aid groups SIM USA and Samaritan’s Purse have been working to help combat the world’s worst outbreak of the disease. Two of the relief workers, Dr Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, contracted the disease and are being cared for at Emory University hospital in Georgia.

Both have been reported to be showing signs of improvement. On Friday, Brantly wrote from hospital that he was “growing stronger every day”.

“This measure is being taken out of an abundance of caution, and it is important to remember that there are no confirmed or suspected cases of Ebola in North Carolina,” Dr Stephen Keener, medical director in North Carolina’s Mecklenburg County, said in a statement.

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Ebola survivor shunned by boyfriend, even school

By BOUBACAR DIALLO and KRISTA LARSON.

The medical school professors no longer want Kadiatou Fanta in the classroom. Her boyfriend has broken up with her. Each day the 26-year-old eats alone and sleeps alone. Even her own family members are afraid to touch her months after she survived Ebola.

Long gone are the days when she was vomiting blood and wracked by fever. And even with a certificate of health declaring her as having recovered, she says it’s still as though “Ebola survivor” is burned on her flesh.

“Ebola has ruined my life even though I am cured,” she says. “No one wants to spend a minute in my company for fear of being contaminated.”

The Ebola virus is only transmitted through direct contact with bodily fluids of the sick, such as blood, saliva, urine, sweat or semen. When the first cases emerged in Guinea back in March, no one had ever confronted such a virulent and gruesome disease in this corner of Africa.

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