Profiling of Africans for Ebola is real in Phila.

Roselyn Gray was not feeling well when she went to work Monday. Her hands were swollen, and she could barely move her fingers.

The 48-year-old receptionist at Multicultural Community Family Services, a nonprofit in Upper Darby, had taken an antibiotic for a mouth infection and did not know she was having an allergic reaction.

By early afternoon, Gray was so uncomfortable that her supervisor told her to go to the Spectrum Community Health Center in West Philadelphia.

There, Gray, who was born in Liberia, said she experienced one of Ebola's more insidious side effects - irrational fear of people even distantly connected to the epidemic that is ravaging three nations in West Africa, but has taken just one life in the United States.

Although she did not feel feverish, Gray said, a health-care worker told her she had a temperature of 105 degrees.

"I looked at the thermometer," she said. "It read 98."

Gray said she was asked if she had traveled out of the country in the last three weeks.

"No," she replied. The last time she had been to Liberia was in March.

She was then asked if she had been exposed to Ebola.

"No," she replied.

Her 21-year-old daughter, Cokie Nanka, a senior at Tufts University, had spent part of the summer in Monrovia, visiting her father, who is a government accountant. But Nanka stayed inside their home most of the time, had no contact with anyone who was ill, returned to Philadelphia the first week of August, and is now completely healthy, back in school outside Boston.

After giving her answers, Gray said, she was isolated in a room for a half hour. When health-care workers returned, they were wearing masks.

"We are taking you to the University of Pennsylvania," she said they told her. "We think you have Ebola."

Brenda Noel, chief operating officer of the Spectrum Health clinic where Gray was seen, said she could not comment other than to note that "an internal investigation" had been launched into the incident.

The nonprofit clinic has been providing a broad range of health care for low-income Philadelphians since 1967. The site at 52d Street and Haverford Avenue opened in 2013.

During an interview in her West Philadelphia rowhouse the day after her visit to the clinic, Gray said she had been humiliated by the health-care workers.

"I felt so bad," she said, putting her hands over her face to hide her tears. Around her wrist, Gray wore a bright-orange bracelet marked ALLERGY that she was given in the emergency room at HUP. When the doctors released her, they told her she was having a bad reaction to penicillin.

Throughout the region, stories like Gray's are being reported, said Caroline Johnson, director of the division of disease control at the Philadelphia Department of Public Health.

"I have heard about patients coming to clinics complaining of a toothache being suspected of Ebola," Johnson said. "We shouldn't be profiling anyone based on country of origin."

Only those who have been directly exposed to the body fluids of someone with Ebola and show symptoms associated with the virus - namely a fever, diarrhea, or vomiting - are candidates for screening, Johnson said.

"It's a learning process for many health-care workers," she said. "We are trying to educate them."

In more than 20 years of managing communicable diseases such as H1N1, SARS, and HIV, Neil Fishman, director of the Department of Healthcare Epidemiology and Infection Control for Penn Medicine, the University of Pennsylvania health system, said, "I have never seen community hysteria amongst health-care providers at this level."

The level of panic - which has been dubbed Fearbola - is reminiscent of the very early days of the AIDS epidemic, he said. While Ebola is undoubtedly an ominous illness with a fatality rate of 50 to 70 percent, Fishman said, "it really is a difficult disease to transmit."

In Pennsylvania, no single hospital has been designated as an Ebola treatment center, Fishman said. Within Penn's health system, however, the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania will be the one where any Ebola patient will be transferred for initial care.

After that, in all likelihood, he said, these patients will be cared for in one of the nation's four biocontainment units.

To avoid even the appearance of racial profiling, Fishman said, all patients coming into any of the emergency departments in the Penn system are asked a series of questions, screening for Ebola.

"The worst thing would be for the West African community to feel alienated and be afraid to come for care," he said. "We are trying to get the message out that we will take care of you, regardless of what you have."

During a meeting on Oct. 14 with public health officials and several service organizations, leaders of Philadelphia's West African community were warned that people were bound to overreact.

"I am sorry to say this, but it is very likely that people will be racially profiled," said Anna Paciorek, an immigration lawyer.

"Forty to 50 cases have been called into my office for evaluation in the past month," Johnson said of the city's health department. "Only three were at all suspicious." In each instance, she said, a different diagnosis was quickly made, ruling out Ebola.

If and when someone with Ebola turns up in Philadelphia, Johnson noted, the city will quarantine people who have been in close contact with the patient. She made a point of drawing a distinction between isolation - in which a patient with active symptoms is confined to a room in a hospital - and quarantine, in which people stay inside their homes.

During a quarantine, she said, the city will provide food, health care, and security at no charge to those being monitored.

"The family becomes the responsibility of the health department."

Undocumented immigrants, she added, should not hesitate to come to a city health clinic when they feel ill.

"Your immigration status is irrelevant," she said, promising that clinic workers do not ask for Social Security numbers or care about anyone's visa status. "We don't want anyone to be afraid to get treatment."

Widespread tension about Ebola, however, has made even perfectly healthy people from African countries wary about identifying themselves.

"People are trying to mask their accents and not wearing African clothing," said Oni Richards-Waritay, executive director of the African Family Health Organization, a nonprofit that helps immigrants obtain medical care. "They don't want to be stigmatized."

Richards-Waritay, 36, a graduate of Arcadia University, has lived in Philadelphia since 2005.

Gray's experience at the clinic is alarming, she said.

"I have empathy for health-care workers because they are on the front lines," Richards-Waritay said. "At the same time, how can we be cautious and still be humane, not marginalizing people?" she asked. "That's a very difficult line to draw."

Last week, Richards-Waritay and her husband, both of whom were born in Liberia, took their 2-year-old son to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. He had a bad nosebleed.

In the waiting room, she asked her husband not to speak.

"His accent is stronger than mine," she said, and was afraid that if the doctors and nurses heard it, they might start asking questions irrelevant to her son's condition.

Underlying the clinic's reaction to Gray, she said, is the assumption that the woman was either lying or unaware of her exposure to Ebola.

"Why would people think that she wasn't telling the truth?" she said, noting that Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian who died of Ebola in Texas earlier this month, had been forthright about his risk factors when he went to Texas Health Presbyterian hospital in Dallas complaining of a fever.

"If you want people to trust you and be open, you have to make them feel comfortable so they can be truthful," she said. "If this continues, it will make things worse."