South Africa has stepped up port surveillance of travellers from West African countries as fears about the spread of Ebola across the globe grew yesterday.
At least 672 people in West Africa have died and 1200 have been infected in the worst outbreak of Ebola ever.
Bart Janssens, director of operations for Doctors Without Borders, said yesterday the crisis gripping Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone would only get worse .
“This epidemic is absolutely out of control and the situation can only get worse because it is still spreading,” said Janssens.
But National Institute for Communicable Diseases deputy director Lucille Blumberg said there was a very “low risk” of the disease reaching South Africa.
Containment measures have been put in place to detect anyone who might be infected, she said.
The death of American Patrick Sawyer – a consultant to the Liberian finance minister who developed symptoms on a flight to Nigeria and died in a hospital there this week – has fuelled fears Ebola could spread through plane travel. He was to have flown on to the US.
Nigeria was trying to trace 30000 people that might be affected, the UK’s Daily Mail reported.
Nigerian actor Jim Iyke raised the ire of social media users when he posted a picture on Instagram of himself wearing an Ebola mask while sitting in a first-class airport lounge as he fled Liberia.
The world aviation agency said the outbreak of the disease could lead to new flight restrictions.
The International Civil Aviation Organisation’s secretary-general, Raymond Benjamin, said: “Until now [the virus] had not had an impact on commercial aviation, but now we’re affected.”
Nigeria’s largest carrier, Arik Air, has suspended flights to Liberia and Sierra Leone, as has Togo-based airline ASKY.
SAA spokesman Tlali Tlali said no special measures were in place as the airline had not been advised by port health authorities to do anything out of the ordinary. “Obviously our staff are cautious.”
Blumberg said she did not believe the virus would spread on an aircraft: “Fears of a global outbreak are rubbish. You really need intense intimate contact with a person and their fluids to catch Ebola. It is not airborne.
“Infected patients from West Africa don’t have the means to travel by plane for medical help.”
But Health Department spokesman Joe Maila said airports had scanners to detect travellers entering the country with a raised body temperature.
“Healthcare workers have been on alert to monitor travellers from West Africa for symptoms of the disease,” he said.
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Screening of blood and samples in all Department of Health laboratories had been increased.
Ebola can kill victims within days, causing severe fever and muscle pain, vomiting, diarrhoea and, in some cases, organ failure and unstoppable bleeding. Victims are infectious only when ill.
In Canada, media reported that a doctor had put himself in quarantine as a precaution after spending weeks in West Africa treating patients with the virus alongside an American doctor, who is now infected.
In Britain, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond chaired the government’s crisis management committee to assess the situation.
One person suspected of being infected in the UK has been tested, but the result was negative.
Dr Sheik Umar Khan, in charge of an Ebola treatment centre, became another victim of the virus in Sierra Leone.
source – timelive