A FORMER Cleveland school teacher, working in Ebola-stricken Sierra Leone for four months, has been left to her organise her own quarantining when she returns to Redlands.
Eleni McDermott, 56, who is planning to return to Redlands on November 9, was told by a federal Health Department spokes-man there was no quarantining facility in Redland City and she did not need quarantining.
Ms McDermott, who worked at schools in Brisbane and Redlands, volunteered to help set up a school, Paradise College, for children in the Sierra Leone capital Freetown in June.
Her distraught mother, Tepsa Michael, rang Redland City Bulletin after finding there was no government contingency plan for her daughter's return.
"My daughter wants to go into quarantine for the obligatory period so there is no chance any of her family, children, grandchildren will be contaminated."
"She would normally live with me in Cleveland but she cannot get answers on what she must do or where she will be housed or even if it is obligatory."
Chief Health Officer Dr Jeannette Young said until adequate processes were in place travellers returning from Ebola-affected areas were asked to call the health department or their local hospital but did not need quarantining.
Dr Young said federal and state governments were working to get the federal Immigration Department to advise Queensland Health of people returning from Ebola-affected areas.
She said if Ms McDermott was feeling unwell, she may be asked to undergo home quarantine.
Her comments were in line with Bowman MP Andrew Laming's who said Ms McDermott did not need quarantining as she was not a health worker.
He said Ms McDermott would be free to travel to Cleveland and stay with her mother but would have to go to a hospital "immediately" if she started getting Ebola symptoms.
Mr Laming said on the weekend Redland Hospital was "fully prepared to manage a suspected Ebola patient" with a special "isolation" section, but diagnosed cases would be sent to a "tertiary centre like Princess Alexandra Hospital".
Although the hospital is not equipped for long-term treatment of people with Ebola-like symptoms, its leading anesthetist Dr Jenny Stedmon is trained in treating Ebola patients.
Dr Stedmon risked her own life to go to Sierra Leone in Africa to help International Red Cross in its Ebola isolation ward. On her return, she was quarantined at her Annerley home for three weeks, the reckoned incubation period for the disease, which has so far killed more than 4400 people.
