Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff to Recommend Quarantine for All Military Forces Returning from Liberia
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US JCS(WASHINGTON) — Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is expected to recommend to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel that all military services adopt the 21-day quarantine that the Army ordered this weekend in response to the ongoing Ebola situation in West Africa.
Army soldiers returning from deployments to Liberia were to be quarantined for 21 days for monitoring to ensure that they had not contracted Ebola. The only soldiers who have left Liberia since the order was put in place are currently under quarantine at a base in Italy, though they were not directly in contact with Ebola patients while in Liberia.
Under the current policy, returning service members will have monitored temperature checks for 21 days and will be asked about potential symptoms. Any service member exposed to the bodily fluids of an Ebola patient would be medically evacuated to the U.S. for treatment at either the National Institutes of Health facility in Bethesda, Maryland, or Emory University Hospital in Atlanta.
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