West African woman being tested for Ebola in Australian hospital

An 18-year-old West African woman is being tested for Ebola after emigrating to Australia from Guinea with eight other family members 11 days ago, state health authorities said on Sunday.

The woman, who has been in home quarantine and monitored by health authorities since her family's arrival, was taken to the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital today after telling health workers she had developed a fever, Queensland chief health officer Dr Jeannette Young told a media conference.

“She’s otherwise well and she has been in home quarantine since the time she arrived into Queensland,” said Dr Young, adding there was no risk to the Australian community.

The result of initial tests for the virus are expected tomorrow.

The woman, who travelled to Australia with eight other members of her extended family, was met at the airport in Brisbane by health authorities as a precaution and has been monitored daily. All were placed in home quarantine.

“She didn’t have any known contact with anyone that was sick with Ebola virus disease but she did come from an area that had a reasonably large number of cases, so that’s why it was thought appropriate that she go into home quarantine when she arrived here,” Dr Young said.

Meanwhile, a senior US medical official warned today that quarantines imposed on travelers coming from Ebola-affected countries in West Africa who have had contact with the disease could discourage American health workers from going there to help fight the epidemic.

"I don't want to be directly criticizing the decision that was made but we have to be careful that there are unintended consequences," Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said of the measures imposed by New York, New Jersey and Illinois.

"The best way to stop this epidemic is to help the people in West Africa, we do that by sending people over there, not only from the USA but from other places," Mr Fauci told NBC's Meet the Press adding such quarantines were "a little bit draconian."

The three states imposed 21-day mandatory quarantines in the last two days for anyone arriving with a risk of having contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea. They are the three West African countries that have borne the brunt of an epidemic that has killed nearly 5,000 people.

The policies were abruptly imposed after a New York City doctor was diagnosed with the disease on Thursday after coming home from treating patients in Guinea.

A nurse who returned on Friday through New Jersey’s Newark airport after working in Sierra Leone with Ebola patients, strongly criticized the quarantine policy yesterday, describing hours of questioning and then transfer to a hospital isolation tent, calling her treatment a “frenzy of disorganization.”

Mr Fauci reiterated what the medical officials have been stressing as Americans worry about the spread of the disease: that it is spread only by contact with bodily fluids of people with symptoms. There have been four cases of the disease diagnosed in the United States.

“The science tells us that people who are not sick, if you do not come into contact with body fluid, if someone comes back from wherever, Liberia, and they’re well, they are no danger to anyone,” Mr Fauci said.

But New Jersey governor Chris Christie, asked to respond to Mr Fauci’s comment that it is not good science to quarantine people when they’re not symptomatic, said, “I don’t believe that when you’re dealing with something as serious as this that we can count on a voluntary system.”

"This is government's job. If anything else, the government's job is to protect the safety and health of our citizens," he told the Fox News Sunday program.

Asked whether the new rules would discourage health workers from going to West Africa, Mr Christie added, “Folks that are willing to take that step and willing to volunteer also understand that it’s in their interest and in the public health’s interest to have a 21-day period thereafter if they’ve been directly exposed to people with the virus.”

Agencies