Yale President Peter Salovey said it's important for clinicians and investigators to go where they can put their expertise to the highest, best use.
Yale-New Hospital received word late Friday from the Centers for Disease Control confirming preliminary test results showing the patient hospitalized in isolation last week with Ebola-like symptoms does not have the Ebola virus.
The patient is one of two unidentified Yale doctoral students who returned recently from a research mission in Liberia. Though the student did not come directly in contact with Ebola patients, Yale officials say the hospitalized student did come in contact with one person who eventually developed Ebola.
The scare has raised questions about educational research, foreign exchange, and study abroad travel to countries with Ebola outbreaks.
In an e-mail to the Yale community last week, University President Peter Salovey said he wanted to directly address the question of why Public Health students – or anyone affiliated with Yale – would even consider traveling to these dangerous parts of the world. Salovey said that as an academic institution, it's important for clinicians and investigators to go where they can put their expertise to the highest, best use, and they may be called on to engage directly with those who are suffering.
Speaking with reporters last week, Robert Alpern, dean of the Yale School of Medicine, said the bar for people traveling as members of the Yale community will be very high.
"We have no control over any member of the Yale community choosing to go on their own," Alpern said, "but we do control whether they go as a member of the Yale community, and I can tell you the restrictions will be very severe. Their skills really need to be required by the community in West Africa, and there needs to be a sponsoring organization that really knows what they should be doing there."
On its website, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is advising education-related travel to Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone be postponed until further notice.
