Who Is Susan Sherman? Kentucky Teacher Quits After Being Told To Take Leave Amid Ebola Fears

A Roman Catholic school teacher in Louisville, Kentucky, resigned after being told by administrators she needed to take a 21-day leave of absence following a mission trip to Kenya. Susan Sherman was forced to take a paid leave of absence from the school after returning on Oct. 26, despite spending her time in Kenya, some 3,000 miles from the nearest confirmed Ebola case.

Sherman’s husband, retired orthopedic surgeon Paul Sherman, said the St. Margaret Mary Catholic School in Louisville told the religion teacher that parents of students had spoken up and were worried about the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, according to the Associated Press. Paul and Susan Sherman spent nine days working with Kenya Relief, an organization that provides food, water and health care resources, as well as building churches and distributing Bibles in local communities. Susan previously worked as a nurse. “She did not know about the leave of absence until we returned,” Paul Sherman said.

Louisville’s Roman Catholic archbishop, Joseph Kurtz, said Thursday that the decision to put Sherman under quarantine was “not the right judgment,” adding that “the parish itself and the school made some very prudent judgments in the midst of an awful lot of confusion at the time.”

Sherman has since resigned from her position at St. Margaret Mary.

According to the World Health Organization, as of Sunday a total of 13,042 suspected cases of Ebola have occurred globally, with 4,818 deaths. Most of the cases have been concentrated in a handful of countries in West Africa, approximately 3, 300 miles away from Kenya’s capital city, Nairobi.

The 21-day quarantine is recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for people at the highest risk of exposure -- those who have had direct contact with the fluids of Ebola-infected patients.