News: Ebola in mind, US colleges screen West African students

College students from West Africa may be subject to extra health checks when they arrive to study in the United States as administrators try to insulate campuses from the worst Ebola outbreak in history.

With the virus continuing to kill in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, the expected arrival of thousands of students from those countries has U.S. authorities on alert but cautioning against alarm.
"I can see why there would be concern; there's no vaccine for it," said Fatima Nor, an 18-year-old freshman at the University at Buffalo, where about 25 students from Nigeria are enrolled for fall. But she said knowing that the virus is transmitted strictly through direct contact with bodily fluids of sick people, and not by sitting next to someone in class, should be enough to calm nerves.
"As long as everyone keeps their personal space, it should be OK," said Nor, of Buffalo.
U.S. universities count 9,728 active students from Nigeria, 204 from Liberia, 169 from Sierra Leone and 95 students from Guinea, according to the federal government.
The odds they could bring Ebola to campus seemed too small to worry Laura Washburn, a senior at Tufts University outside Boston.
"It's not like I'm not going to class because someone has been to Africa," she said. "I mean, it's hard to say how paranoid we should be about it, but I feel pretty safe at Tufts."
The roughly 30 Nigerian students expected at the University of Illinois will be pulled aside for a temperature check and private Ebola discussion when they arrive at the health center for mandatory immunization paperwork and tuberculosis screening, said Dr. Robert Palinkas, the center's director.
The plans have been reassuring to the handful of parents who have called wondering whether their child's placement with a West African roommate should give them reason to worry, he said.

Dr. Robert Palinkas, director of the McKinley Health Center at the University of Illinois, poses in an exam room in Urbana, Ill., Thursday, Aug. 21, 2014.