Canada's Ebola Quarantine Impacting Humanitarian Response

"To me, we're not stepping up in the way that we should be as a country that does have the ability to do it and changing the quarantine regulations is a low-stakes way of being able to do it."

"All the decisions that the Canadian government has decided to make over the past few months around the Ebola outbreak, none of them have been very forthright in saying, we understand that this is a global priority and as Canada we're going to step up to help in the ways that are equal to the capacities that we have in this country."

Lily-Madeleine Seguin, public health promotion advisor, Oxfam global team 

 

"[The government is] continually reviewing the measures alongside the latest evidence with international partners and will determine next steps before the existing measures are set to expire."

"[The temporary measures are not intended to eliminate all risk,] but to reduce the likelihood of importation [of Ebola], support early identification of potentially ill travellers, and therefore reduce the risk of potential spread to others in Canada." 

Karine LeBlanc, Health Canada communications adviser

Lily-Madeleine Seguin, public health promotion adviser woth Oxfam. The Canadian Press

 

Travellers returning from the Democratic Republic of Congo or from Uganda are advised by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control to self-monitor for symptoms and only if they had a high risk exposure like direct contact with bodily fluid of an infected person, or close, face-to-face contact with someone coughing, vomiting or bleeding who has the virus, should they quarantine.

 

"I'm very critical about how Canada chose to implement their public health measures", commented Mylene Ratelle, hired as a health promotion manager at Doctors Without Borders who would have remained for longer in the DRC had she not needed to quarantine for three weeks at her Montreal apartment prior to the start of the fall semester, as a professor of public health. She faulted the lack of scientific basis for strict border measures enacted by Canada.

 

People who have been in casual contact with Ebola patients are not generally candidates to contract the disease. It is through direct contact with bodily fluids, such as blood, vomit and semen that spreads the virus. The Canadian government's mandatory 21-day quarantine set to expire, has been condemned by many humanitarian aid workers. The measures had been announced in May at the time of the FIFA World Cup which had strict rules for co-hosting countries. 

 

At the time, Canada's minister of health stated "It's not a question of science", but rather that of protecting people from the lasting trauma of past outbreaks when people from around the world converge en masse at such world events. Doctors Without Borders were critical of the measures that resulted in a dozen Canadians identified with valuable expertise cancelling their assignments as a result of the quarantine measures. MSF's Ebola response in the DRC had twenty-three Canadians in all, taking part. 

 

The Globe and Mail

 

"To me, it's quite egregious", said Roojin Habibi, research director of global health law at the  Global Strategy Lab, University of Ottawa and York University. The travel restrictions, she held, ignore expert guidance from the World Health Organization which stated that blanket travel restrictions are based not on science, but fear.

 

Canadian humanitarian aid workers are also concerned that an extension of the expiring regulations affecting Canadians and permanent residents of Canada returning from the DRC, Uganda or South Sudan could be detrimental to the response of the outbreak with their ability to respond stifled by the long quarantine period. This outbreak has been identified by the World Health Organization as the swiftest growing Ebola outbreak in history, as well as the deadliest. Africa's public health agency has reported over 2,500 deaths from over 5,000 infections.

 

Aid workers are also critical of the $8 million committed by the current Liberal government in support of the fight against the outbreak, particularly compared to the Conservative-led government's response in 2014 of $110 million related to financial assistance given by Canada to West Africa during that country's Ebola outbreak. 

 

The Globe and Mail

 

Haiti "the State has Completely Collapsed"

"Every Haitian thinks that we are being abandoned by the whole world."

"If I was in a foreign country and I believed at any moment my life could be at risk, I would leave too."

"[But] what about the ones who can't leave?"

Dr. Wesner Junior Jacotin, Haitian physician

"Those who are here to stop the mess are running away from it."

"Leaving a capital in total anarchy is an act of cowardice."

Reginald Delva, former Haitian minister of the interior

Charred vehicles in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on March 9, 2024. The U.S. Embassy in Haiti is evacuating some of its personnel from the nation's capital as rampant gang violence intensifies. CLARENS SIFFROY/AFP/Getty Images

Haiti, the impoverished, crime-ridden, woebegotten half of the island of Hispaniola that it shares with the Dominican Republic, is in a chaotic mess of immense proportions, a total breakdown of civilized mores, with roaming masses of Haitian criminals assaulting all the arms of government, including the police and the military, with free reign to spread terror among the population, where they rape, and loot, destroy and murder at will. 

Echoes of the dictatorship-rule in the 1950/60s of Papa Doc Duvalier and his dreaded Tontons Marcoutes acting on behalf of the Duvalier reign, collecting 'taxes' from residents, similarly threatening, looting, raping and murdering. The Duvalier reign in  Haiti had the tacit approval of the United States when Haiti became a getaway for Americans seeking a holiday spot with no rules of civilized conduct.

At Duvalier's death, his son, Baby Doc Duvalier exercised a stint at governing the  ungovernable nation  of blacks whose heritage on the island stemmed from their status as enslaved black Africans set down on Hispaniola when the original indigenous population was decimated by diseases brought by the presence of western European colonizers like France and Britain, who established plantations and used enslaved Africans in slave labour. 

The two countries on the island couldn't be further apart in their fortunes and their social, cultural, historic and economic outcomes, Haiti is a pathetic failure of a country, while its neighbour enjoys a far superior state of civil engagement; the contrast between a successful nation and one that is a perennially ungovernable state whose people live in primitive conditions of fear of the criminal class which their authorities are incapable of controlling.

 

A resident carries tires to be added to a burning barricade to deter gang members from entering his neighbourhood, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Tuesday, November 19   [Odelyn Joseph/AP]

 

As conditions in the island nation steadily descended from bad to horrible, United Nations personnel in the capital Port-au-Prince were being evacuated for safety's sake. Embassies and international aid groups including Doctors Without Borders operating a few still-functioning hospitals have been forced to suspend operations, given gangs storming into greater areas of the capital.

 

Most recently the UN Security Council debated whether to begin an official peacekeeping mission with its background of failed interventions in the Caribbean nation. After the earthquake and tsunami of 2010 that devastated Haiti, UN troops had arrived to aid in maintaining calm and helping in reconstruction, but they also engaged in sexual exploitation, and their presence led to an outbreak of cholera from unsanitary practises contaminating water systems.

 

Despite which, the population and government officials were prepared in their desperation to welcome UN soldiers returning, but it was not to be, when both Russia and China used their veto power, arguing that there is no peace to keep, in Haiti. The United Nations had some 300 employees in 18 different agencies engaged in Haiti. Dozens assigned to the UN Integrated Office in Haiti, a political mission known by the acronym of BINUH, have been evacuated.

 

 

Petionville, a Port-au-Prince neighbourhood where aid groups and their employees are based were raided by gangs and although police and local residents fought back and killed many, the gangs have not been put out of commission. At least 220 people were killed due to a dozen attacks from November 11 to 19. The UN migration agency revealed that 41,000 people had fled their homes in November.

The Kenyan police staffed international force sent to Haiti in June has faced heavily armed gangs. The UN feeds 40,000 people daily. According to Pierre Esperance in Port-au-Prince, only senor staff remained at most embassies. "Everyone is gone -- Canada, Japan, the U.S. The state has completely collapsed."

 

Residents question a person who is not from the neighbourhood after an attempted overnight attack by gangs on the affluent hillside suburb Petion-Ville sparked a violent civilian response, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, November 19, 2024. REUTERS/Ralph Tedy Erol/File