Travel bans will increase the damage wrought by ebola.

Abstract

Cases of Ebola that have turned up in Dallas and New York City have prompted calls for a travel ban to prohibit travelers from Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea from entering the US during the ongoing Ebola outbreak. But travel bans have not worked in past epidemics and will not stop Ebola from spreading. Banning travel would slow the movement of people and goods to those countries, harm the international response to the outbreak in West Africa, and increase the prospect of ongoing global spread of Ebola. In addition, travel bans could lead to complete isolation of those 3 countries and would further worsen the economic and humanitarian toll of this crisis. US travel bans would also run counter to international agreements and could encourage other countries to impose their own bans against the United States and other countries in future outbreaks. The occurrence of secondary cases in 2 US nurses who treated the first Ebola patient in Dallas, and the corresponding lack of secondary cases occurring among members of the broader community, underscores the importance of focusing our Ebola control efforts on US hospitals and ensuring that clinicians in these settings have all of the training and protective equipment necessary to safely diagnose and treat Ebola patients.