Nurse ‘made to feel like a criminal’ after returning to US following stint treating Ebola patients

An American nurse has published a scathing account of her treatment after being put in isolation in the United States following a stint caring for Ebola patients in West Africa, saying she was made to feel like "a criminal".

Kaci Hickox was the first person to enter mandatory 21-day quarantine for medical staff returning to parts of the US who may have had contact with Ebola patients in West Africa, the epicentre of the outbreak that has killed nearly 5,000 people. The new rules took effect in New York and New Jersey on Friday, the same day Hickox returned.

"This is not a situation I would wish on anyone, and I am scared for those who will follow me," Hickox wrote in The Dallas Morning News, saying she was showing no symptoms when she arrived back in the US.

"I am scared about how health care workers will be treated at airports when they declare that they have been fighting Ebola in West Africa. I am scared that, like me, they will arrive and see a frenzy of disorganisation, fear and, most frightening, quarantine."

Hickox, who landed at New Jersey's Newark Liberty International Airport after working with Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in Sierra Leone, will be monitored at a hospital for 21 days, the known incubation period of Ebola.

Her account recalled the ordeal that began with her "gruelling" two-day journey from Sierra Leone back to the US.