As 86 migrants enter into their third week of quarantine, being denied the right to legal assistance, an international expert says such measures are unnecessary when people show no symptoms of a disease.
Eighty men are being held in quarantine at the Safi detention centre and another six remain under observation at a separate unit at Mater Dei Hospital, officially to prevent the risk of the spread of Ebola. All were screened on arrival and none had Ebola symptoms. Tests on those admitted to hospital proved negative.
A former director of the World Health Organisation told Times of Malta that if the men had none of the symptoms on arrival, it was not necessary to take the precautions in question.
“There is too much panic going on, which is worse than the infinitesimally small risk of transmission in Europe,” Mukesh Kapila told Times of Malta. A professor of global health and humanitarian affairs at the University of Manchester, UK, he has just returned from Ebola centres in Sierra Leone and Liberia, where he said the epidemic was being brought under rapid control.
Mightier than the Ebola virusis prejudice,ignorance and fear
A group of migrants were rescued by the Armed Forces of Malta on January 22 when they attempted to cross the Mediterranean to Europe on a dinghy. On the way, 20 of them perished, three were rushed to hospital and another four followed later. One of them died after a few hours.
The authorities said quarantine was necessary because of the migrants’ countries of origin: Burkina Faso, Mali, Guinea and the Ivory Coast. However, during a press briefing held on the day of their arrival, health authorities acknowledged the men had spent months in Libya, where there was no Ebola outbreak. They stated the risk was low.
Prof. Kapila said Ebola was only prevalent in three countries in West Africa and “even there the epidemic is coming under rapid control”. The rest of Africa was Ebola free, he insisted.
“If there was no specific individual history of Ebola contact and, on initial examination, they had no fever or Ebola disease symptoms meeting the WHO criteria then the risk to others is virtually nil. In the circumstances, I don’t think that quarantine is necessary,” he told Times of Malta.
Prof Kapila, who was named Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2003, recently wrote on Twitter: “Mightier than the Ebola virus is prejudice, ignorance and fear.”
A Home Affairs Ministry spokeswoman told Times of Malta the quarantine period would end on February 12. “Once they will be medically cleared by the health authorities, staff from the refugees office will be organising briefing sessions where all the necessary information regarding asylum and protection will be provided,” she said. Human rights NGOs usually providing legal assistance to asylum seekers admitted they were unable to help those quarantined, even though it was their right.
Human rights lawyer Katrine Camilleri has questioned whether draconian measures were put in place because these were men arriving by boat, pointing out that the risk from people travelling by air could be bigger. The UN human rights agency, UNHCR, said: “Carrying out health checks on individual asylum-seekers may be a legitimate basis for a period of quarantine, provided it is justified as a preventive measure... It should be ensured they are nevertheless provided with adequate information and support”.
UNHCR pointed out international standards state such concerns should be addressed by “appropriate, proportionate and non-discriminatory measures”.