Quarantine

Quarantine may be defined as the restraint or segregation of human beings or other living creatures, who may have come, either potentially or actually, into contact with transmissible pathologies, until the moment when it is considered certain that they no longer constitute a health risk. The term and the concept of quarantine are profoundly rooted in culture and world health procedures, and have periodically recalled peak interest in the course of epidemics. In the past the concept of quarantine was used to refer to the period of isolation of people alone, whereas in more recent times it has come to be applied to animals and things as well (Gensini et al., 2004). Quarantine has been implemented in many different ways in the course ofWestern history, undergoing periods in which it was highly considered and periods in which it was relatively neglected. In Europe and North America, during the last decades of the twentieth century, quarantine was substantially underrated,rift gold given that the spectacular achievements of modern medicine, from effective vaccines to powerful antibiotics, generated, in the general public but sometimes in health systems and operators too, the false impression that the battle against infectious diseases could be considered won. The recent, worldwide realities of ‘new’ transmissible pathologies, including the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and the avian influenza, have provided evidence of the fact that human beings are still engaged in a struggle against pathogen agents. These communicable diseases have determined a boost in the popularity of quarantine: in the United States, because of the avian influenza, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has opened many new control stations at the border points in which there is a higher influx of people (Mafart and Perret, 2003).

The history of quarantine paradoxically indicates that people do not learn enough from history itself. Recent surveys conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reveal that if avian influenza were to expand through the United States, the mandatory cooperation of U.S. citizens would be low, if not very low. Furthermore, in the case of an epidemiological emergency, the collaboration of the majority of the population in health measures planned by the government would be limited, largely because the majority of the interviewed people did not know what quarantine is,rift gold what it is for, and what it exactly entails. Reviewing quarantine from a historical-didactic perspective therefore constitutes a notable formative opportunity to illustrate an ever-pertinent health measure, whose general potentialities and limits of application must be precisely understood not only by health administrators, medical historians, and technical operators, but also by the general public.