AIDS and Ebola: Parallels Between the Crises
As the Ebola outbreak continues in West Africa, political leaders and public health experts in the U.S. are at odds over how to stop the spread of the disease. For some in the public health community, this latest disagreement is all too reminiscent of the AIDS crisis, and the stigma surrounding the disease when it was first discovered back in 1981.
Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, director of the International Center for AIDS programs at the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, is one of dozens of AIDS activists, doctors, scientists and researchers who signed a letter calling on Gov. Andrew Cuomo to stop the mandatory 21-day quarantine for travelers returning from Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia who had contact with Ebola patients.
The group says the quarantines are unnecessary, and could generate stigma against Africans, the same way misinformation stigmatized gays during the height of the AIDS crisis.
"It was really a tragedy in the early years of the epidemic, because by people separating themselves from the most affected populations, that by itself resulted in delay in mobilization of resources, and delay in confronting the epidemic," El-Sadr said.
In this interview with WNYC's Amy Eddings, El-Sadr talks about the parallels between the AIDS crisis and the Ebola outbreak.
