Nurse: No option but to fight Ebola quarantine
DEVELOPMENTS
— Forty-two people have been removed from the list of Ohioans being monitored for Ebola symptoms. The state emergency operations center released a statement Sunday that says 122 people remain on the contact list. That's compared with 164 on Saturday. State health officials say they expect the 122 people on the contact list to be cleared by Tuesday. Also, the Akron bridal shop visited by a Dallas nurse who was later diagnosed with Ebola — Coming Attractions Bridal and Formal — will reopen Tuesday.
— Government Chief Medical Officer Dr. Brima Kargbo confirmed Sunday that a fifth doctor in Sierra Leone had tested positive for Ebola. The other four all have died from the virus.
— France was treating a U.N. employee who contracted the Ebola virus in Sierra Leone, the health ministry said Sunday. The statement said the patient, a foreign citizen who “worked in the fight against Ebola,” was transferred to a military hospital near Paris.
From news services
Kaci Hickox said in an interview with the Maine Sunday Telegram that she was fighting for the rights of other U.S. medical workers who are trying to bring the deadly outbreak under control in West Africa.
After she arrived in Maine last week, state health officials went to court in an attempt to bar her from crowded public places. A judge ruled Friday she must continue daily monitoring of her health but can go wherever she pleases.
“I hope in six months aid workers returning back can be unnoticed,” she told the newspaper. “They won’t be in the media like I was, I hope. And they can walk into a grocery store and maybe no one even knows they were working in a country with Ebola, but one day I hope everyone can know and still smile at them in the grocery store. I know that won’t happen today.”
Hickox, 33, told the newspaper that she will respect the wishes of town residents and avoid going into town during the illness’s 21-day incubation period, which for her ends Nov. 10. She was criticized by some who said she wasn’t considering the public’s well-being by resisting the quarantine.
“I didn’t mean to bring this media storm onto this community, either, but I think unfortunately sometimes, especially when up against governors, you don’t always have an option,” she said. “I don’t feel like I was given an option.”
Hickox is originally from Rio Vista, Texas, and worked in Indonesia, Burma, the Darfur region of Sudan and Nigeria before returning to the U.S. to earn master’s degrees in public health and nursing. She went to Sierra Leone this summer with Doctors Without Borders when the Ebola outbreak erupted.
She told the paper that she didn’t count the number of people who died, only the number of survivors: 39 during her time. But she still remembers the victims. On her last night in the country, she treated a little girl who didn’t survive.
“I don’t remember her exact age. I think she was 10, but to watch a 10-year-old die alone, in a tent and know there wasn’t anything you could do, it’s hard,” she said.
