WINDHOEK – Rwanda has turned the table on Ebola monitoring, springing a surprise travel restriction on people entering Rwanda from the USA and Spain, who now have to report their medical conditions “regardless of whether they are experiencing symptoms of Ebola”.
It is a case of dishing out sweet justice for a country that has noted that its citizens, as other Africans, have been subjected to racism and unjust harassment by the Western countries, especially the US, where calls to close the US border to anyone coming from Africa, irrespective of where in Africa, are on the verge of becoming a reality.
Hence, this week Rwanda responding by issuing the directive, the timing was influenced by recent cases of Ebola in the US and Spain.
“Visitors who have been in the United States or Spain during the last 22 days are now required to report their medical condition — regardless of whether they are experiencing symptoms of Ebola — by telephone by dialling 114 between 07:00 and 20:00 for the duration of their visit to Rwanda (if less than 21 days), or for the first 21 days of their visit to Rwanda,” read the notice by Rwanda’s Ministry of Health.
In addition to the three people diagnosed with the deadly virus in Dallas, USA, an additional five patients transported from West Africa have received treatment for Ebola on American soil. Spain has seen three cases, according to health officials.
However, incredulous as Rwanda’s response might be, so is the US Department of Homeland Security’s this week announcement of travel restrictions in the form of additional screening and protective measures. All travellers to the Unites States whose travel originates in Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea – the countries hardest hit by the on-going Ebola outbreak – will be required to fly into one of the five US airports that have the enhanced screening and additional resources in place: New York’s JFK, Newark, Dulles, Atlanta and Chicago, Homeland Security officials said.
Perhaps Rwanda wishes to stress the point that the country is more than 3 700 kilometres away from the West African counties outbreak and is yet to report a single case of Ebola, yet its citizens have been victims of Ebola racism in America, as have others from the African continent.
The country has not had a single case of Ebola in the ongoing epidemic.
Rwanda has been enforcing travel bans since August against people coming from Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, the three West African nations hardest hit by Ebola.
According to US’ ABC news, the New York magazine’s Daily Intelligencer has a helpful roundup of Americans who have “no idea how African geography works, let alone how a non-airborne virus is transmitted”. This includes a New Jersey elementary school that asked two students from Rwanda to stay at home and hundreds of parents in Mississippi who pulled their kids out of school because the principal attended his brother’s funeral in Zambia, which is 3 000 miles away from the outbreak and has no known cases of Ebola.
So people have not allowed basic geography or biology to cloud their judgment, which in this case means that anyone coming from anywhere in the whole of Africa can unleash an Ebola epidemic in the suburbs of America.
And now Rwanda has responded in kind, which makes sense, as the US has actually reported an Ebola death.