Rothstein Responds

Lin et al. remind us of another important societal challenge in a public health crisis: ensuring the fair treatment of minority and vulnerable populations in settings beyond the primary location of the disease outbreak. Although many of us were unfamiliar with the discriminatory treatment of Africans in Guangzhou, China, during the Ebola outbreak, similar discriminatory and irrational behavior has been reported in other public health crises and other countries. Most commonly, individuals who are thought to be from countries where the disease originated are assumed to be infected or at risk. For example, in the United States, during the SARS epidemic in 2003, there was discrimination against Asians; and during the H1N1 epidemic in 2009, there was discrimination against Latinos. In the fall of 2014, during the height of the Ebola epidemic, there were several reports of irrational discrimination against travelers returning to the United States from African countries, such as Rwanda and Tanzania, which are thousands of miles from Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, and where there were no reported Ebola cases. Lin et al. demonstrate that, in an emergency, public health officials also have a vital role to play as public health educators.