A three-year-old girl was banned from nursery school for a week on suspicion of Ebola infection after she traveled to Uganda with her family, sources said Wednesday.
The child was asked to stay home - even though she had no symptoms and Uganda is not presently at risk of Ebola contagion - after other parents threatened to pull their children out of the public school in the town of Fiumicino, near Rome.
"Uganda is Ebola-free, and anyway I had my kids tested to make sure they are in good health," the child's father told In Terris online newspaper.
"There was no actual reason to imagine a risk..the only explanation is we were coming from Africa. What happened is pure madness".
"Uganda is not at risk, there is no danger," the school principal said.
Also on Wednesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) said it was tabling fresh talks on the epidemic after criticism that it reacted slowly to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa that has already killed more than 4,500 people, mostly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
The meeting in Geneva will examine screening measures at borders and consider whether stricter travel regulations should be put in place. New rules in the US require travellers from the worst affected countries to arrive at one of five airports, and a curfew has been imposed in a town in Sierra Leone after two people were shot dead in riots on Tuesday.
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