U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned against imposing excessive restrictions on the movement of health workers, Monday.
Ban's remarks come in the wake of several U.S. states imposing tighter restrictions on people coming from the Ebola stricken countries of West Africa. The governors of New York and New Jersey had announced two weeks ago that all travelers who had contact with Ebola patients in West Africa will be placed under mandatory 21-day quarantine once they arrive in the country. The governors of Virginia and Maryland also had said that all travelers from Ebola stricken countries in West Africa will be actively monitored by public health officials.
However, the White House is not in favor of imposing excessively restrictive measures like travel bans and quarantines. President Obama said last week that the United States cannot "hermitically seal itself off" from Ebola.
"The best way to stop this virus is to stop the virus at its source rather than limiting, restricting the movement of people or trade," Ban told a news conference in Vienna. "Particularly when there are some unnecessarily extra restrictions and discriminations against health workers."
"They are extraordinary people who are giving of themselves, they are risking their own lives," he said, reports Reuters.
Elaborating further, Ban said that major international airlines and shipping services must carry on their trading activities and transportation.
However, Ban cautioned that if anybody showed symptoms of Ebola the particular person should be immediately given treatment and evacuated if required.
Meanwhile, a U.N. health worker who contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone has been flown to France from Sierra Leone for treatment, the health ministry said on Sunday, reports The Guardian
The U.N. worker has been placed in isolation under high security in an army training hospital in the eastern Paris suburb of Saint-Mandés.
A French nurse, who worked as a volunteer for aid organization Doctors without Borders in Liberia, was given treatment for Ebola at the same hospital in September.
