UN chief criticises restrictions as Ebola travel hurdles mount
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UN chief Ban Ki-moon spoke out against travel restrictions as a way to fight Ebola on Monday as Singapore became the latest country to impose stricter policies.
"The best ways to stop this virus is to stop the virus at its source, rather than limiting and restricting the movement of people and trade," UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in Vienna.
World Health Organisation (WHO) officials have been pointing out that the negative economic consequences that such policies have for the most affected countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone far outweigh any small and unproven protective effects that travel restrictions might have. Singapore's Minister of State for Health Lam Pin Min said his country would impose visa requirements on citizens from these three countries from Wednesday, local media reported.
Canada announced on Saturday that it has suspended the processing of visa applications from people who have been to the West African countries affected by the Ebola outbreak.
Ban also criticised countries that have quarantined health workers returning from West Africa, regardless of whether they show any Ebola symptoms.
"There are some unnecessary extra restrictions and discrimination against health workers," Ban told reporters.
He urged authorities to treat such workers like everyone else as long as they do not show any symptoms.
"They are extraordinary people who are giving of themselves, they are risking their own lives," Ban said.
A policy debate has erupted in the United States after nurse Kaci Hickox was quarantined without symptoms in New York after returning from Sierra Leone. People who are infected with Ebola can only pass on the virus once they start showing first signs of the disease, such as fever. In the three hardest-hit countries in West Africa, about 13,500 people have been infected and 4,900 have died, according to the latest WHO update on Friday.
The outbreak has apparently slowed down in Liberia, but the country's Assistant Health Minister Tolbert Nyenswah warned the public against a false sense of complacency.
"It is not yet over until we stop transmitting the virus completely, it will not be over until all counties report zero cases for over 21days and in the next 42 days in our country," Nyenswah said in Monrovia.
