Response to Ebola crisis abroad faces growing criticism

Samantha Power visited the worst hit countries to find out how the global response can be improved. Aid organisations said there is a desperate need for more doctors, nurses and treatment centres so patients are not turned away.

She arrived in Guinea’s capital Conakry today in a bid to understand which resources are missing so she can push other countries to offer more help.

Power, who will also visit Sierra Leone and Liberia, told NBC News: “The international response to Ebola needs to be taken to a wholly different scale than it is right now.”

“You have countries at the United Nations where I work every day who are signing on to resolutions and praising the good work that the United States and the United Kingdom and others are doing, but they themselves haven’t taken the responsibility yet to send docs, to send beds, to send the reasonable amount of money.”

Quarantines

The US envoy also criticised new quarantine policies in America as “haphazard and not well thought out”, after several states including New York and New Jersey imposed 21-day quarantines.

She said: “We have to find the right balance between addressing the legitimate fears that people have and encouraging and incentivising these heroes.”

“We need to find a way when they come home that they are treated like conquering heroes and not stigmatised for the tremendous work that they’ve done”.

I believe @NYGovCuomo and I made the right decision for the health of the public in NJ & NY on the 21 day quarantine. @FoxNewsSunday

— Governor Christie (@GovChristie) October 26, 2014

And I believe these guidelines will soon be followed nationally as well. #Ebola @FoxNewsSunday

— Governor Christie (@GovChristie) October 26, 2014

The first person isolated under the new rules in Illinois also condemned the response, calling her treatment as a “frenzy of disorganisation”.

‘Frenzy’

Kaci Hickox, who arrived at Newark airport in New Jersey from Sierra Leone, described hours of questioning by officials in protective gear. The nurse, who was on assignment with Doctors Without Borders, told Reuters she was misdiagnosed with having a fever and was subsequently transferred to a hospital isolation tent.

In an article for The Dallas Morning News, Hickox said: “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 disorganisation, fear and, most frightening, quarantine. Kaci Hickox

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