A nurse under mandatory quarantine in New Jersey after caring for Ebola patients in Sierra Leone has blasted more stringent state policies for dealing with health care workers returning from West Africa, saying the change could lead to medical professionals being treated like "criminals and prisoners," reports GHN based on CNN.
In a first-person account in The Dallas Morning News, Kaci Hickox wrote that she was ordered placed in quarantine at a hospital, where she has now tested negative in two tests for Ebola. Still, hospital officials told her she must remain under quarantine for 21 days.
"This is not a situation I would wish on anyone, and I am scared for those who will follow me," she wrote.
A mandatory quarantine imposed by New York, New Jersey and Illinois on health care workers who just returned to the United States from treating Ebola patients in West Africa has prompted a debate on how to prevent the spread of the disease without discouraging medical aid workers from fighting the it.
The isolation policy was abruptly implemented Friday by the governors of New York and New Jersey, Andrew Cuomo and Chris Christie. The announcement came one day after a New York doctor who treated patients in Guinea became the first Ebola case diagnosed in New York City.