The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) announced the radical measure last week, i

n a bid to prevent the nightmare scenario of a victim unknowingly passing the di

sease on while walking the streets of a US city.
Such an occurrence is known as the Typhoid Mary effect, after Mary Mallon, an asym
ptomatic typhoid sufferer originally from Ireland, who is thought to have passed
the disease on to 53 people while working as a cook in New York at the turn of
the last century.
She was forcibly placed in quarantine on two occasions and died 1938 having spen
t three decades in isolation.
Close calls involving Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian man who infected two nurs
es at Dallas Presbyterian Hospital before succumbing to the disease this month,
and Dr Craig Spencer, who mixed with the public in New York for five days before
developing a fever and reporting to hospital, have led CDC to tighten up the re
strictions on those travelling to the US from west Africa.