Monitoring the Ebola outbreak

To: RIT Community
From: Jeremy Haefner, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs; Sandra Johnson, Senior Vice President for Student Affairs
Subject: Monitoring the Ebola outbreak

We want to assure you that RIT officials are monitoring the Ebola virus disease outbreaks that are occurring in parts of West Africa (Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria).

While there is no current cause for concern on our campus, RIT prides itself as a global university with international students representing 100 nations, programs abroad and overseas faculty research. We are taking precautionary outreach measures to communicate with members of our community with ties to the affected Ebola areas. The RIT Student Health Center is carefully monitoring the situation along with other university officials and is prepared to take further action, if it is deemed necessary.

Dr. Brooke Durland, executive director of the Student Health Center, and her staff are working closely with offices across the university, the New York State Department of Health and the CDC. At the present time, the Ebola outbreak has been limited to a specific geographic area in West Africa with no cases arising in the United States; thus, we believe the risk to the RIT community right now is very low.

The CDC is urging all U.S. residents to avoid nonessential travel to Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia because of the unprecedented outbreak. Please see CDC travel recommendations here: http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/notices. RIT faculty and staff must obtain advance approval from their division vice president before making travel arrangements for university business to these locations. No university or sponsor funds may be used, or sponsorship provided, in support of travel to West Africa without prior approval.

For the most updated information about the Ebola outbreak, we encourage you to review the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website: http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/index.html?s_cid=cdc_homepage_feature_001

We will continue to monitor the situation closely and we will provide updates as new information becomes available.