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Ebola, Quarantine, and the Scale of Ethics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 October 2015

Tom Koch
Tom Koch*
Affiliation:
Department of Geography, Medical, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
*
Correspondence and reprint requests to Tom Koch, PhD, University of British Columbia, Department of Medical Geography, 1984 West Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada (e-mail: tom.koch@geog.ubc.ca).
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Abstract

Objective

The West African Ebola epidemic has raised fundamental questions about the ethical and practical use of quarantine measures during infectious disease events.

Methods

This article first reviews the idea of containment in response to disease and the means by which containment has been perceived. It then proposes that disaster medicine, whose focus is the individual, and public health in its focus on populations have related but distinct ethical imperatives. The means by which both were deployed in the West African Ebola epidemic are considered.

Results

The argument is made that a narrow focus on the individual patient or community prevented an early recognition of the potential for disease expansion. In this case, a broad public health perspective was overshadowed by localized attention.

Conclusions

In the future, a public health perspective is a necessary and ethical priority and thus the use of isolation and containment in conjunction with the imperative to treat that is the focus of medical ethics. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2016;10:654–661)

Keywords

epidemicsepidemiological monitoringdisaster medicine
Type
Original Research
Information
Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness , Volume 10 , Issue 4 , August 2016 , pp. 654 - 661
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, Inc. 2015 

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