A teacher who will be traveling to Rwanda has agreed to put herself in a 21-day Ebola quarantine when she gets back to Oklahoma, even though the African country is located thousands of miles away from the most affected places and has not had any cases the virus, the Huffington Post reported on Tuesday.
The Blackwell Elementary School teacher, who has no been publicly named, will be going on a church mission trip to Rwanda in November. It's declared an Ebola - free country and is located in central and eastern Africa. But Oklahoma borders Texas, where there have been several diagnosed cases and even one death.
Ebola has been most devastating in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.
More than 400 people have gathered together and signed an online petition asking the woman to stay away from the school for three weeks after she comes home. Ebola symptoms take about three weeks to appear, but a person isn't contagious until they get symptoms.
Still, parents say they don't want to have any chances taken with their children' health.
"My daughter has multiple health problemsand she at risk for infection, and that is without adding something like Ebola to it," Reba Newtown told KOCO.
School superintendent Rick Riggs said that Center for Disease Control and local health department officials have told him the chances of the teacher getting infected, and spreading it around the school, are close to zero.
"She just wants to do what's right and I support her in that effort," he said, referring to Blackwell parents.
The teacher and school principal discussed the trip on Monday and the teacher decided to stay home for 21 days.
"My recommendation to our school board will be that we will put her on paid administrative leave even though we don't think there is a threat of any kind," Riggs said.
