Policy measures were implemented by state and federal governments on the compulsory quarantine of people traveling to the U.S. from West Africa to prevent the spread of Ebola virus disease. As such, the policy called for a 21-day quarantine for healthcare workers who were returning. However, this policy posed a significant ethical challenge because it became difficult to balance between people’s individual rights and public health. In other words, some people perceive quarantine as an unjustified reduction of their freedom, while on the other hand, it was done to guarantee public health by controlling the Ebola virus disease.
Folayan, Haire and Brown (2016) hold that ethical issues relate to the prevention and containment of Ebola basing on the relevance and scope of quarantine together with isolation within and outside the affected nations. Nonetheless, t hese ethical issues yield a breach on personal liberties, restrictions of autonomy, and abuses of basic human rights (Pomerantz, 2015). Another ethical challenge is having forced quarantines on returning health workers who might fear and be unwilling to volunteer in another outbreak. Hence, the fear and lack of enthusiasm to volunteer puts a burden on West African nations whose health providers would be devastated by the non-volunteering health professionals. Moreover, the quarantine policy poses great ethical challenges since E bola patients turn out to be infectious only after revealing symptoms. Therefore, the quarantine of non-symptomatic personnel for twenty-one days was a pointless and wasteful appropriation of freedom.
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Nevertheless, I believe that the mandatory quarantine was ethical and justified because they were measures to prevent the disease. Typically, it was essential for the state and federal policy to limit individual freedom of the people through compulsory quarantine than expose them to Ebola, which can lead to death. In the final analysis, it is evident that though quarantine is not the best method of controlling infectious diseases, it is sometimes the only possible means of responding to the epidemic. Therefore, the collaboration of the CDC with the federal government was to reduce the threats posed by Ebola. This implies that people should understand that though their freedom was limited, it was for their benefit.
References
Folayan, M., Haire, B., & Brown, B. (2016). Critical role of ethics in clinical management and public health response to the West Africa Ebola epidemic. Risk Management and Healthcare Policy , 55. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27274326
Pomerantz, A. (2015). Ethics of Ebola Quarantines. Sound Decisions: An Undergraduate Bioethics Journal, 1(1). Retrieved from https://soundideas.pugetsound.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1004&context=sounddecisions
