

Washington • 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 on Capitol Hill and some Democrats, 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 U.S. and the world, experts say.

Among the travel ban skeptics is former President George W. Bush's top health official, who coordinated the government's response to bird flu in 2005 and 2006. At the time, it was feared that the H5N1 flu strain, capable of jumping from birds to humans, could become the catalyst for a global pandemic.

A travel ban "is intuitively attractive, and seems so simple," said Mike Leavitt, who led the Health and Human Services Department from 2005-2009. "We studied it intensely in preparation for H5N1. I became persuaded that there are lots of problems with it."



"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."




House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, also favors a travel ban, and his spokesman, Kevin Smith, said the speaker hasn't ruled out bringing the House back into session to address the Ebola issue. Obama "has the authority to put a travel ban into effect right now," Smith said.

Lawmakers have proposed banning all visitors from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, or at least temporarily denying visas to nationals of those countries. They've suggested quarantining U.S. citizens arriving here from those nations for at least 21 days, Ebola's incubation period, and limiting travel to West Africa to essential personnel and workers ferrying supplies.


Experts say some of those limited steps make sense but question the legality, ethics and effectiveness of large-scale quarantines. Although it would be theoretically possible to get supplies and medical personnel to West Africa even while shutting down commercial air travel, in practice it would turn into a logistical nightmare, they say. They cite expenses and difficulties in chartering private aircraft or enlisting the military's assistance to transport thousands of personnel and huge amounts of supplies from around the world that is now moving freely on scheduled air travel.

