- The Ebola Outbreak: Select Legal Issues, CRS Legal Sidebar, October 6, 2014: “On August 8th, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak of the Ebola Virus Disease in West Africa a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. The recent arrival in the United States of several health care workers who contracted the disease, combined with the first diagnosis of a case in the U.S. at a hospital in Dallas, has sparked discussion about the appropriate government response. Aside from the various policy considerations at issue, the outbreak has generated several legal questions about the federal government’s authority to restrict specific passengers’ travel and/or contain the outbreak of an infectious disease. These questions include, inter alia, whether the federal government may: (1) restrict which countries U.S. nationals may travel to in the event of a public health crisis; (2) bar the entry into the United States of people who may have been infected by a disease; and (3) impose isolation or quarantine measures in order to control infectious diseases.
- Ebola: Basics About the Disease, October 3, 2014: “The Ebola virus is named after the Ebola River, near where the virus was discovered in 1976 in Zaire, now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). It is in the filovirus family, so called because of its filamentous shape. EVD is also known as Ebola hemorrhagic fever. The disease sometimes causes hemorrhage (i.e., bleeding) from body openings, but this symptom is not consistent. Five strains of Ebola virus have been identified. The Zaire strain is responsible for the current outbreak in West Africa. A slightly different Zaire strain is responsible for a smaller unrelated outbreak now in the DRC.”
Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery Since 2002
Sorry, comments are closed for this post.