(MENAFN- The Peninsula) The head of a leading British charity hit out yesterday at western nations for quarantining health worker "heroes" returning from Ebola-hit west Africa and refusing visas to people from the worst-hit countries.
Save the Children chief executive Justin Forsyth, on a trip to Sierra Leone, singled out immigration rules imposed by Canada and Australia and measures by some US states that quarantine medics who have treated infected patients.
"It is very important that nurses and doctors from abroad come to Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea easily and also leave and return to their home country for rest without the threat of being quarantined," he said.
Experts say quarantining medical professionals who have shown no symptoms of the virus is counter-productive and could deter other workers from helping contain west Africa's Ebola crisis.
In a case which attracted international criticism, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie kept a nurse in an isolation tent for three days after she flew back from Sierra Leone.
Meanwhile, Canada and Australia controversially announced last week that they were suspending visa applications from Ebola-hit west African nations to prevent the virus from crossing their borders.
"I think it's completely wrong what some governors in the United States have done and what the governments of Canada and Australia have done too," he said in the capital Freetown.
"We should make it easy for health workers to come and go without hindrance (because) they are heroes."
Forsyth spoke out at the end of a four-day visit to assess the extent of the epidemic in Sierra Leone, one of the hardest-hit countries with around 1,500 deaths.
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