Effectiveness of Ebola travel ban questioned

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 US 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 US and the world, experts say.

In addition, preventing people from the affected countries from travelling 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 US 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 US 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 Center. "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 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health voiced similar objections at a US congressional hearing this past week. So did President Barack Obama after meeting with administration officials coordinating the response.
Obama said he didn't have a "philosophical objection" to a travel ban but that he was told by experts that it would be less effective than the steps the administration has instituted, including temperature screening and monitoring at the five airports accounting for 94 per cent of the arrivals from the three impacted nations. There are 100 to 150 arrivals daily to the US from that region.

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