Nurse: No option but to fight imposed quarantine

FORT KENT, MAINE >> A nurse who successfully fought Maine’s quarantine for health care workers who have treated Ebola patients said she had no option but to challenge how medical professionals were being treated and is hopeful that others who return from West Africa won’t face the same reaction.

Kaci Hickox said in an interview with the Maine Sunday Telegram she was fighting for the rights of other U.S. medical workers who are trying to bring the deadly outbreak under control in West Africa.

After she arrived in Maine last week, state health officials went to court in an attempt to bar her from crowded public places. A judge ruled Friday she must continue daily monitoring of her health but can go wherever she pleases.

“I hope in six months aid workers returning back can be unnoticed,” she told the newspaper. “They won’t be in the media like I was, I hope. And they can walk into a grocery store and maybe no one even knows they were working in a country with Ebola, but one day I hope everyone can know and still smile at them in the grocery store. I know that won’t happen today.”

Hickox, 33, told the newspaper that she will respect the wishes of town residents and avoid going into town during the illness’s 21-day incubation period, which for her ends Nov. 10. She was criticized by some who said she wasn’t considering the public’s well-being by resisting the quarantine.

“I didn’t mean to bring this media storm onto this community, either, but I think unfortunately sometimes, especially when up against governors, you don’t always have an option,” she said. “I don’t feel like I was given an option.”

Hickox is originally from Rio Vista, Texas, and worked in Indonesia, Burma, the Darfur region of Sudan and Nigeria before returning to the U.S. to earn masters’ degrees in public health and nursing.