Editorial: Is ebola screen good enough?

An ambulance outside the Madrid apartment of the Spanish nurse infected with Ebola. Photo / AP

Ebola. The word alone is enough to send shivers down my spine. And as the epidemic grows so does the possibility it could reach our shores.

Liberia has been hit hardest by the latest outbreak that has killed more than 3000 people.

But news a nurse in Spain has died after contracting the disease brings this deadly virus into sharper focus: It has now spread outside of Africa.

As of yesterday afternoon, three more people had been hospitalised in Spain and doctors had been rushing to identify dozens of others at risk.

The nurse worked at Madrid's La Paz-Carlos III, where she cared for two elderly Spanish missionaries who died from the virus after being flown home from west Africa. She is the first person to contract the disease outside of Africa.

A US video journalist who contracted the disease is being treated with an experimental drug, which is also being used to treat a patient in Dallas. Hopefully this drug works and can be distributed to those who need it, before the disease spreads and more lives are lost.

But the nurse's death has prompted fresh concerns about how to contain ebola.

The European Union is demanding answers, worried the fatal illness could spread into Europe and people around the world are so concerned about the disease that a quick online search will find pages and pages of articles and opinion pieces.

People are right to be worried. Specialists say diseases can spread quickly and easily when there is efficient transport in place, meaning people who have unwittingly contracted ebola could travel and unknowingly infect others.

US officials say preventing travel between the States and west Africa would, however, jeopardise the amount of aid that could be given.

The Western Bay seems so far from all this. But is it really? It is easy to think it could never come to New Zealand, but it will only take one infected person to slip through our border.

New Zealand is screening passengers from west Africa and this is prudent. But any sign this outbreak is heading our way must raise the question of whether we should even allow people from infected nations into the country.