IT was with great difficulty on BBC Radio 2 that I listened to the mother of a child from Sierra Leone complaining that her child had been refused entry to a school where he had previously been taught.

This so-called intelligent mother had recently flown into the UK from a area that was in quarantine.

They couldn't even leave their town to visit any other area as it is a high risk area but because the airport was there they could fly anywhere in the worldvirtually unchecked.

Her argument was even if someone had the Ebola virus it couldn't be passed on until they showed symptoms.

However, the incubation period is 21 days.

What happens if he showed the symptoms after he had been accepted at this, or any, school?

And what about the possibility of the virus being passed on to other passengers on the plane or to him or her for that matter via another infected traveller?

It beggars belief that a quarantined area, where bodies lie in the street because even some health workers are too frightened to move them, allows high risk passengers to fly globally giving this virus a helping hand to spread uncontrollably around the globe.

This is stupidity and ignorance of the highest order by the country that let them leave and those countries, like ours, to allow them in.

Quarantine means just that: no one in, no one out.

John Cumberland, Rushyford.

ACCORDING to the front page of The Northern Echo (Oct 8) the Royal Victoria Infirmary, in Newcastle, is upgrading an isolation ward to take Ebola patients.

And yet, while this work is still going on, the hospital has been chosen as a major reception centre for suspect Ebola cases.

What I really fail to understand is why take the chance of bringing infected cases into our area?

You can take all the precautions you like but things still go wrong.

And why not pick Leeds?

JM Gowland, Heighington.