Doctors Without Borders announced on Monday that Amanda Tiffany, an epidemiologist working with the humanitarian aid group, was one of at least 10 people not attending the conference. On threat of quarantine, these healthcare workers are banned from attending the annual meeting of the ASTMH (American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene).
'Unfortunately my colleague, Amanda Tiffany, was not allowed to travel to ASTMH due to fear of quarantine upon arrival,'
Carrie Teicher, a doctor with the aid group said.
Dr. Teicher added on behalf of Tiffany and the Médecins Sans Frontières (DWO) group that they hope such regulations are reassessed quickly. It seems that the stigma on both American and foreign doctors is great.
The annual conference of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene is scheduled to take place between the 2 nd and 6 th of November. Over 4,000 doctors expected to attend the event were warned in a letter from the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals to remain at home if they had visited Sierra Leone, Liberia or Guinea within the 21 days preceding the conference or if they had been in contact with Ebola patients.
'We see no utility in you traveling to New Orleans to simply be confined to your room,'
the letter from the Department of Health read.
Conference organizers and attending physicians alike disagree with the quarantine policy imposed by the state of Louisiana. According to them, such limitations are outside of the scientific understanding of the transmission of the hemorrhagic fever virus.
Louisiana's Governor Bobby Jindal is one of the Republicans calling for the enforcement of a travel ban to the United States from affected countries.
In the meantime, Doctors Without Borders is now forced to distribute antimalarial medications in Liberia as a result of the Ebola outbreak. Countries like Liberia no longer have the malaria treatments they need because of the high demand for Ebola assistance.
Dr. Chibuzo Okonta explains that the initial symptoms are quite similar for both diseases, and as such, there are risks that patients suffering from malaria be misdiagnosed as Ebola patients and brought to Ebola treatment centers.
'The objective is to eliminate the risk that patients with fever, suspected of having Ebola, will end up in Ebola treatment centers in contact with infected persons.'
Dr. Okonta said.
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