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Kenyan health officials help passengers to fill out medical forms before
screening them as they arrive at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in
Nairobi. Experts have said that screening air travellers on departure
from Ebola-hit countries is far smarter than monitoring them when they
arrive abroad. PHOTO | FILE | AFP
By MARIETTE LE ROUX
In Summary
- Instead of relying on a shield at their own borders, countries should help Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone boost capacity to spot Ebola cases, experts said.
Screening air travellers on departure from Ebola-hit
countries is far smarter than monitoring them when they arrive abroad,
experts said on Tuesday.
Instead of relying on a shield at their own borders,
countries should help Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone boost capacity to
spot Ebola cases, they said.
"The best approach to minimise risks to the global
community is to control the epidemic at its source," said Kamran Khan of
St Michael's Hospital in Toronto, Canada.
"While screening travellers arriving at airports
outside of West Africa may offer a sense of security, this would have at
best marginal benefits, and could draw valuable resources away from
more effective public health interventions."
The analysis, published in The Lancet, said
screening on exit would entail monitoring in just three international
airports — in Conakry, Monrovia and Freetown. But screening on arrival
required far greater resources to be similarly effective.
Sixteen airports in 15 countries receive direct
international flights from Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, the study
found. These, in turn, provide connecting flights that serve 1,238
cities, where only one in 2,500 passengers would be from the three west
African countries.
The team looked at 2014 flight schedules and
patterns of passenger movement in 2013 to predict the risk of the virus
hitching a ride in a passenger.
Statistically, without exit screening, three
Ebola-infected travellers would depart on an international flight from
the affected area every month. The experts did not quantify the likely
impact of exit screening measures, but said gains from additional
testing on arrival would be "negligible".
"Ideally, we would assume that all symptomatic
travellers would be identified through exit screening," Marisa Creatore
of the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St Michael's Hospital in
Toronto said.
"However... because Ebola virus has a long
incubation period where people are not ill and do not display symptoms
(average 8-10 days, up to 21 days), most infected travellers will not be
symptomatic and possibly not even know they are infected.
"If they are not showing symptoms, then they will
not be detectable with thermal imaging or other interventions either at
exit or at entry."
European health ministers agreed last week to
launch a review of exit screening measures in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra
Leone. Just over half of passengers from the three affected countries
travel to just five destinations: Accra in Ghana (17.5 per cent), Dakar
in Senegal (14.4 per cent), London (7.7 per cent), Banjul in Gambia (6.8
per cent) and Paris (six per cent), the new study said. New York was
21st on the list with 0.5 per cent.
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