Does Ebola travel ban make sense?

WASHINGTON (AP) – A ban on travel from West Africa might seem like a simple and smart response to the frightening Ebola outbreak there.

It’s become a central demand of Republicans and some Democrats in the United States Congress, and is popular with the public. But health experts are nearly unanimous in saying it’s a bad idea that could backfire.

The experts’ key objection is that a travel ban could prevent needed medical supplies, food and health care workers from reaching Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, the nations where the epidemic is at its worst. Without that aid, the deadly virus might spread to wider areas of Africa, making it even more of a threat to the U.S. and the world, experts say.

In addition, preventing people from the affected countries from traveling to other countries could be difficult to enforce and might generate counterproductive results, such as people lying about their travel history or attempting to evade screening.

The U.S. has not instituted a travel ban in response to a disease outbreak in recent history. The experts insist now is not the time to start, especially given that the disease is still extremely contained in the U.S. and the only people who have caught it here are two health care workers who cared for a sick patient who later died.

“If we know anything in global health it’s that you can’t wrap a whole region in cellophane and expect to keep out a rapidly moving infectious disease. It doesn’t work that way,” said Lawrence Gostin, a professor and global health expert at Georgetown University Law Centre.

“Ultimately people will flee one way or another, and the more infection there is and the more people there are, the more they flee and the more unsafe we are.”

Officials with the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health voiced similar objections at a U.S. congressional hearing this past week. So did President Barack Obama after meeting with administration officials coordinating the response.

There are 100 to 150 arrivals daily to the U.S. from that region.

Still, with little more than two weeks from midterm elections and control of the U.S. Senate at stake, there is mounting pressure on Capitol Hill to impose travel restrictions.

Lawmakers have proposed banning all visitors from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, or at least temporarily denying visas to nationals of those countries. They’ve suggested quarantining U.S. citizens arriving here from those nations for at least 21 days, Ebola’s incubation period, and limiting travel to West Africa to essential personnel and workers ferrying supplies.