QUARANTINE AND ISOLATION

On July 2, 2009, a Chilean soldier with flu symptoms arrived in Haiti for his UN peacekeeping assignment. He was quarantined—isolated from others until formally diagnosed. The disease agent was soon confirmed as H1N1, more popularly known as “swine flu.”¹ Another Chilean peacekeeper became infected, followed by a twenty-three-year-old Haitian who had not been outside the country.² Swine flu had shown up in Mexico and the United States a few months earlier. Dr. Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organization, declared the outbreaks a “public health emergency of international concern.”³ Soon swine flu became a pandemic. The next