Quarantine
Quarantine
Main page
2318750

Quarantine

logo
Community Hub0 subscribers
What are your thoughts?
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Quarantine

A quarantine is a restriction on the movement of people, animals, and goods which is intended to prevent the spread of disease or pests. It is often used in connection to disease and illness, preventing the movement of those who may have been exposed to a communicable disease, yet do not have a confirmed medical diagnosis. It is distinct from medical isolation, in which those confirmed to be infected with a communicable disease are isolated from the healthy population.

The concept of quarantine is known to have been practised through history in various places. Notable quarantines in modern history include the village of Eyam in 1665 during the bubonic plague outbreak in England; East Samoa during the 1918 flu pandemic; the Diphtheria outbreak during the 1925 serum run to Nome, the 1972 Yugoslav smallpox outbreak, the SARS pandemic, the Ebola pandemic and extensive quarantines applied throughout the world.

Ethical and practical considerations need to be considered when applying quarantine to people. Practice differs from country to country; in some countries, quarantine is just one of many measures governed by legislation relating to the broader concept of biosecurity; for example, Australian biosecurity is governed by the single overarching Biosecurity Act 2015.

The word quarantine comes from quarantena or quarantaine, meaning "forty days", used in the Venetian language in the 14th and 15th centuries and also in France. The word is designated in the period during which all ships were required to be isolated before passengers and crew could go ashore during the Black Death plague. The quarantena followed the trentino, or "thirty-day isolation" period, first imposed in 1377 in the Republic of Ragusa, Dalmatia (modern Dubrovnik in Croatia).

Merriam-Webster gives various meanings to the noun form, including "a period of 40 days", several relating to ships, "a state of enforced isolation", and as "a restriction on the movement of people and goods which is intended to prevent the spread of disease or pests". The word is also used as a verb.

Quarantine is distinct from medical isolation, in which those confirmed to be infected with a communicable disease are isolated from the healthy population.

Quarantine may be used interchangeably with cordon sanitaire, and although the terms are related, cordon sanitaire refers to the restriction of movement of people into or out of a defined geographic area, such as a community, in order to prevent an infection from spreading.

The mandatory quarantine of special groups of patients, including those with leprosy, started early in Islamic history. A hadith going back to the Islamic prophet Muhammad advised individuals present in a region with a plague outbreak to remain in place, and advised healthy individuals to avoid traveling there. The Persian Muslim polymath Avicenna argued for controlling "the spread of diseases" in his medical encyclopedia The Canon [Al-Qanun] of Medicine, published in 1025. He also recommended quarantine for patients with infectious diseases, especially tuberculosis. In the early 8th century the sixth Umayyad caliph Al-Walid I segregated lepers from the general population, with some later sources crediting the caliph with opening a hospital. The separation of lepers from the general population was also practiced in the Moroccan city of Fez, where lepers were relocated to a cave system outside of the city. Dedicated leprosariums were built in the time of the Ottoman sultan Murad II in the 15th century, with some of the facilities operating for centuries. Since the sixteenth century, the Ottoman Empire has isolated travellers coming from epidemic areas during the Bubonic plague. A quarantine involved isolating healthy travellers for a period of time so that it could be ascertained if they were sick or not.

See all
User Avatar
No comments yet.