Ebola crisis: WHO calls for checks on travelers
Print Edition
Authorities in countries affected by Ebola should check people departing at international airports, seaports and major border crossings and stop any with signs of the virus from traveling, the World Health Organization said yesterday.
The UN health agency reiterated that the risk of getting infected with Ebola on an aircraft was small as infected people are usually too ill to travel, and said that the risk is also very low to travelers in affected countries, namely Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.
There was no need for wider travel or trade restrictions, the WHO said.
“Affected countries are requested to conduct exit screening of all persons at international airports, seaports and major land crossings, for unexplained febrile illness consistent with potential Ebola infection.
Any person with an illness consistent with EVD (Ebola virus disease) should not be allowed to travel unless the travel is part of an appropriate medical evacuation.”
If a traveler has stayed in areas where Ebola cases have been reported recently, he or she should seek medical care at the first sign of illness — fever, headache, sore throat, diarrhea, vomiting, among other symptoms, the WHO said, noting: “Early treatment can improve prognosis.”
Countries that do not have Ebola cases must strengthen their capacity to detect and contain any cases immediately, the WHO said, but it did not recommend active screening of arriving passengers.
“It is better if countries do screening on the front-end,” WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said.
Nigeria has 12 confirmed cases of the Ebola virus, up from 10 at last week’s count, of which five have almost fully recovered, its health ministry said yesterday. It said 189 people in Lagos and six others in the southeastern city of Enugu were under surveillance.
A doctor who had recovered had been discharged, the ministry said.
The Ebola virus has killed more than 1,000 people in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia since the outbreak began in March, and four people have died in Nigeria since it was brought to Lagos by a Liberian man on July 20.
“Patients under treatment have now been moved to the new 40-bed capacity isolation ward provided by the Lagos state government,” the ministry said.
It added that experimental drugs were in the process of being cleared for the treatment of Ebola, although one, nano silver, had been rejected because it did not meet requirements.
Fighting the disease in Nigeria is complicated by the fact that doctors are on nationwide strike.
The ministry sacked 16,000 doctors on Thursday after they refused to end their strike in the midst of the epidemic.
Health care workers fighting to stop the disease in overcrowded and ill-equipped clinics often succumb to Ebola themselves.
The WHO says more than 170 health care workers have been infected and at least 81 have died.
The death toll from Ebola is still climbing and the UN health agency faces questions over whether it should have declared the outbreak a “public health emergency of international concern” before August 8.
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