Issue Brief Travel Bans Will Increase the Damage Wrought by Ebola Jennifer B. Nuzzo, Anita J. Cicero, Richard Waldhorn, and Thomas V. Inglesby C ases of Ebola that have turned up in Dallas and New York City have prompted calls for a travel ban to prohibit travelers from Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea from entering the US during the ongoing Ebola outbreak. 1 But travel bans have not worked in past epidemics and will not stop Ebola from spreading. Banning travel would slow the movement of people and goods to those countries, harm the international response to the outbreak in West Africa, and increase the prospect of ongoing global spread of Ebola. In addition, travel bans could lead to complete isolation of those 3 countries and would further worsen the economic and humanitarian toll of this crisis. US travel bans would also run counter to international agreements and could encourage other countries to impose their own bans against the United States and other countries in future outbreaks. The occurrence of secondary cases in 2 US nurses who treated the first Ebola patient in Dallas, and the corresponding lack of secondary cases occurring among members of the broader community, underscores the im- portance of focusing our Ebola control efforts on US hos- pitals and ensuring that clinicians in these settings have all of the training and protective equipment necessary to safely diagnose and treat Ebola patients. No Evidence Travel Bans Work The main reason that the leading public health agencies in the world—including the World Health Organization (WHO) and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—have opposed imposing travel bans is that there is no scientific or even good anecdotal evidence that bans have ever been effective at limiting the spread of contagious diseases. 2,3 A recent modeling analysis showed that the risk of international spread is related to the course of the epidemic in West Africa and that a travel ban, even if 80% effective, would only result in a delay of importation of cases of a few weeks. 4 An expert group convened by the WHO reviewed all of the available scientific evidence sur- rounding the use of travel bans and travel restrictions and determined that such measures were ineffective at limiting the spread of diseases like SARS and pandemic influenza. 5 HIV-related travel bans implemented by dozens of coun- tries, including the United States, in the 1980s were not effective at slowing the spread of infection and led to ‘‘deleterious effects . at the societal level—negatively impacting HIV prevention and treatment efforts.’’ 6(p1) The best hope of eliminating the Ebola threat to the United States is to stop the epidemic in West Africa. Travel bans would decrease the capacity of the US, other countries, and nongovernmental organizations to control this out- break. The WHO has said that decreased flights to the region have already hindered the ability of response or- ganizations to move staff and supplies in and out of the region. ‘‘Any discontinuation of transport will affect hu- manitarian aid, doctors, nurses and human resources en- tering the country, the transfer of biological sampling and equipment for hospitals. All of this needs international transporting, international airlines..This will create more Jennifer B. Nuzzo, DrPH, is a Senior Associate; Anita J. Cicero, JD, is Chief Operating Officer and Deputy Director; Richard Waldhorn is a Contributing Scholar; and Thomas V. Inglesby, MD, is Chief Executive Officer and Director; all at the UPMC Center for Health Security, Baltimore, Maryland. Biosecurity and Bioterrorism: Biodefense Strategy, Practice, and Science Volume 12, Number 6, 2014 ª Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. DOI: 10.1089/bsp.2014.1030 306