I assume the TSA will put protocols in place to screen for Ebola.
Via Star Tribune
As alarm grows over the deadly Ebola outbreak in West Africa, families in Minnesota’s large Liberian community are scrambling for plane tickets and visas to get relatives out of the stricken zone and at least two Twin Cities churches have canceled mission trips intended to deliver medical and other aid to Liberia.
“We decided to err on the side of caution,” said Wynfred Russell, executive director of African Career, Education & Resource Inc. in Brooklyn Park and co-leader of a planned January trip of missionaries and public health volunteers. Instead of finishing work on a school under construction in northern Liberia, the group now plans to send money and equipment for the school and to prevent the spread of Ebola into the region.
Russell, a Liberian native, also is trying to help his brother escape the virus and travel to Minnesota. But flights are booked up and fares are skyrocketing, he said. “I know a number of people trying to get their relatives out,” Russell said. “There is this wave of anxiety.”
More than 30,000 people of Liberian descent live in Minnesota, primarily in the northwestern suburbs including Brooklyn Park, which is home to one of the largest Liberian populations outside of Africa.
About 200 people attended a Sunday evening meeting in Brooklyn Park, where state and city officials discussed the outbreak and its effect on the Liberian community in Minnesota, but repeated earlier assurances that a local outbreak was highly unlikely, even if an infected person came to the Twin Cities.
“We’re not here tonight because of any fear that Ebola is coming to Brooklyn Park,” said Brooklyn Park Fire Chief Ken Prillaman. Health officials said the disease is transferred only through direct contact with infected bodily fluids.
As a precaution, however, Brooklyn Park officials last week announced that firefighters and police officers will wear eye shields and facemasks, as well as gloves, when responding to calls involving flulike symptoms. That policy, which some residents feared could stigmatize members of the city’s large Liberian population, sparked sharp discussion at a meeting last week and again on Sunday.
Anxiety in local communities has grown since Patrick Sawyer, who works for the Liberian government and whose wife and three daughters live in Coon Rapids, died in Nigeria on July 25 — the first American to die from Ebola. Sawyer last visited Minnesota about a year ago and planned to return in August.
Sawyer’s widow, Decontee Sawyer, spoke at Sunday’s meeting, urging community members to help with relief efforts and make sure fear doesn’t lead to stigmatization, as in the case of a local Liberian woman who said she was sent home from work on Saturday because she was sneezing.
“Let’s not turn our backs against our brothers and sisters who are already struggling from this tragedy,” Sawyer said. “I understand the fear. Good people are afraid, but lets not let that fear turn into something worse.”
Health officials at Sunday’s meeting reassured Minnesotans that in order for a person to be infected with Ebola, he or she must have traveled to the affected West African region within the last 21 days, be experiencing the related flulike symptoms, and have been in direct contact with fluids from an infected person.