(For more on Ebola, see EXT7.)
Oct. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Some of the biggest companies doing business in West Africa are opposing a ban on travel to the U.S. from the countries hit hardest by Ebola, something a growing list of American lawmakers are calling for.
ArcelorMittal, which mines ore in Liberia, met with other companies in the capital of Monrovia today on an effort to provide logistics to aid the fight against the disease.
“The restrictions are potentially damaging to the aid effort and destructive for the economies of these countries,” said Ewa Gebala, a spokeswoman for the Luxembourg-based company. “We should be isolating Ebola, not these nations.”
Ebola has been devastating to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea -- three of the world’s poorest nations -- where it has claimed more than 4,500 lives. U.S. lawmakers have been pressing for a ban on travelers from that region since a Liberian man with the disease arrived in the U.S. and two caregivers became infected.
“Without the support of the international community the situation for these economies, many of whom are only beginning to return to stability after decades of civil war, will be even more catastrophic,” the chief executive officers of ArcelorMittal, Newmont Mining Corp., Aureus Mining Inc. and eight other companies said in a statement last month.
A ban on travelers would undercut efforts to the fight the disease and hurt any potential for economic recovery in those nations, the companies said.
Medical Supplies
“Isolating us will only contribute to the stigmatization of the country,” said Abdulai Bayraytay, a spokesman for the Sierra Leone government. “Prohibiting passengers will not help the situation but rather would even make the supply of much needed medical supplies very very difficult as well.”
Some U.S. lawmakers, including House Speaker John Boehner, have come out this week in favor of keeping away travelers from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. Boehner, a Republican of Ohio, said the possibility of an outbreak in the U.S. means a temporary ban is necessary. Others have said the U.S. should refuse visas to anyone from those three countries.
“A travel ban won’t solve the Ebola crisis, but it should be part of a broader strategy,” Representative David McKinley, a West Virginia Republican, said in a statement yesterday. “Stopping the outbreak in West Africa is the only way to contain the virus” but “there are several common-sense steps we need to take to protect the American people.”
‘Back Door’
Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has pledged to U.S. lawmakers that airport officials in her country are now ensuring that anyone who had contact with an Ebola patient can’t get on a flight out of the country, as the passenger who made it to Dallas had done, according to Riva Levinson of KRL International, a Washington-based firm that represents the nation and companies working there.
“People think that shutting our borders will best protect the country from the disease, but all it will do is encourage people to come through the back door,” Levinson said. “The debate now is being driven by fear, the logic and science does not back it up.”
Isolating the disease, not the region was highlighted by International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde, who wore a button with just that slogan at the IMF’s annual meeting in Washington Oct. 11.
President Barack Obama said yesterday that, while not philosophically opposed to a ban, he didn’t think it would help and could make matters worse.
Obama’s Opposition
“In all the discussions I’ve had thus far, with experts in the field, experts in infectious disease, is that a travel ban is less effective than the measures that we are currently instituting, that involve screening passengers who are coming from West Africa,” Obama said.
David Dausey, dean of the school of public health at Mercyhurst University, disagreed with that assessment.
“Every argument that you hear against it doesn’t hold up,” Dausey said. “We’ve got to do more now to contain this disease.”
The current airport screening measures with non-touch thermometers and questionnaires are ineffective, at best, he said. A U.S. travel ban should be accompanied by a surge of U.S. military efforts, transporting health officials and foreign aid to the region.
“We are willing to use peacekeeping troops for war, but we aren’t willing to do it for Ebola,” he said. “If this were a war, we would be responding very differently.”
Porous Borders
Given the porous nature of the borders in West Africa, determined travelers could slip into other nations and make their way to the U.S., according to Thomas Frieden, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
If that happened, the passengers wouldn’t have the exit screening in country nor the enhanced oversight when landing in the U.S., Frieden testified at a congressional hearing yesterday.
“We’re able to screen on entry,” Frieden said. “We’re able to get detailed locating information. We’re able to determine the risk level.”
The ban on travelers from those nations would restrict the ability to get aid workers into those nations. It would also undercut the economic and political stability of the nations, further spreading the disease there, opponents of the ban say.
“This holds the promise to turn this from a tragedy into a full-blown disaster,” said David Evans, a World Bank economist who wrote a report on the economic impact of the outbreak. “It really could have destabilizing political effects.”
Worse Evil
Guinea President Alpha Conde has made a similar argument.
“We wish the panic would stop,” Conde said in an interview with Bloomberg Africa TV in Washington on Oct. 11. “In combating Ebola, we risk creating an even worse evil, namely breaking African economies.”
The pressure to ban incoming passengers followed the revelation that two nurses who treated Thomas Eric Duncan in the U.S., contracted Ebola. Both have been transferred from Dallas to hospitals that specialize in the treatment of infectious diseases.
Of the 275,000 international passengers that arrive at U.S. airports everyday, about 150 -- or less than 0.1 percent -- come from at-risk nations in Africa. The new U.S. airport checks started three days after Duncan’s death from the disease.
No. 1 Task
Even with a travel ban, it’s not hard to come up with scenarios in which a person with a disease that can remain asymptomatic for up to 21 days can find their way to the U.S., said James Carafano, a national security fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington.
“No matter what procedures are put in place” individual cases, such as Duncan, may still find their way to U.S. hospitals, Carafano said. “The number one task of the federal government should be working with state and local governments” so they can handle those individual cases, he said.
Ahmed Gaba in Freetown, Sierra Leone, is looking at the prospect of a U.S. travel ban and seeing the possibility that it could prevent him from seeing his mother and siblings in Philadelphia anytime soon.
“My family in the US are afraid of coming” to Sierra Leone, because of the outbreak, “and if the call for a ban is approved then it will be long before we get to see each other,” Ahmed said. “I am confident that Ebola will soon end and our fears will be over.”
--With assistance from Silas Gbandia in Sierra Leone and Ougna Camara in Conakry.