What's Wrong With How U.S. and #Uganda Plan to Stop #Ebola Spreading . These are very different policies, but both rely on a common assumption: that creating geographic distance from a threat provides protection. However, surveillance, isolation and response capacity are often more important. And both the Ugandan and U.S. moves have drawn criticism from public health and medical experts who argue that managing outbreaks depends more on detection and monitoring than distance alone.
And both decisions emerge from a long-running debate in public health: whether controlling where people are located is more effective than investing in the systems that identify, monitor and treat disease.
As an epidemiologist studying infectious disease outbreaks, I think a look at the history of border restrictions and closures during epidemics helps explain why scientific consensus usually recommends against them.
Land borders are challenging to 'close'
The instinct to seal borders during outbreaks goes back centuries. Venice's 14th-century "quarantino" was one of the earliest organized attempts by a state to regulate movement in the name of collective health. It worked because the unit of control was a ship: a discrete location that could be anchored offshore for a period of time.
A land border is a fundamentally different problem. As trade networks crossed continents, epidemic control encountered something maritime quarantine never had to solve. You cannot easily anchor people at a land border.
By the 19th century, repeated cholera outbreaks had made the problem international. European powers responded with waves of uncoordinated border closures and trade restrictions that caused enormous economic damage without reliably stopping transmission.
Africa intelligence on Umojja.com