Friday, November 7, 2014

Louisiana Dept of Health and Hospitals bars Ebola Researchers from Conference on Infectious Diseases

Thirty Ebola experts who traveled recently to West Africa, including an official of the World Health Organization, have been banned from attending a New Orleans medical meeting about infectious diseases.
The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals warned doctors and others who returned recently from Liberia, Guinea or Sierra Leone that they should not attend the annual meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene this week in New Orleans.
Health workers of the International Federation of Red 
Cross and Doctors Without Borders take part in 
pre-deployment training for staff heading to West Africa
.(Photo: Fabrice Coffrini, AFP/Getty Images)
In a letter to people who registered for the conference, Louisiana officials said they were trying to prevent people at the conference from infecting others with Ebola. Anyone who travels to Louisiana within three weeks of visiting West Africa will be confined to their hotel rooms, the letter says. Ebola has an incubation period of up to 21 days.
"We see no utility in you traveling to New Orleans to simply be confined to your room," says the letter, signed by Kathy Kliebert, secretary of the Department of Health and Hospitals, and Kevin Davis, director of the Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.
Bill Gates is presented an award by Alan Magill, President 
of American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (
ASTMH) during its 63rd Annual Meeting in New Orleans 
on November 2, 2012 (Photo by Peter G. Forest)
The tropical medicine society says Louisiana's decision has no scientific basis. People with Ebola are not contagious until they begin to show symptoms, such as a fever, and possibly not for two to three days after that, according to an October article in the New England Journal of Medicine. That gives doctors and others plenty of time to isolate themselves, according to the report, written by the journal's editors.
Read the rest of the story HERE.

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