She’s left Fort Kent, but Kaci Hickox isn’t leaving the northern Maine town behind quietly. True to her word, the nurse who treated Ebola patients in Sierra Leone before returning to the United States to have two governors attempt to quarantine her isn’t giving up her fight to ease the returns of many more aid workers still treating Ebola patients abroad.
“Like many aid workers, I went to West Africa to respond to the Ebola outbreak because it was the most essential struggle about which I knew I could do something,” Hickox wrote in an OpEd for The Guardian posted to the newspaper’s website on Monday.
“I spent four of the most difficult weeks of my life fighting against a disease that destroys people of all ages and physical strengths. I witnessed men, women and children — who days earlier were strong and full of life — struggle to hold a glass of water to their lips. I worked in an Ebola case management center where our beds were constantly filled and so many others suffering from Ebola in West Africa needed help, but the capacity was lacking; we need many more people to go and help.
“Like me, most workers who return from helping to care for Ebola patients will thankfully never develop symptoms of Ebola, and US policy needs to reflect that truth rather than stoke fears that someone could get sick.”