Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Health of­fi­cials have height­ened sur­veil­lance at all lo­cal ports of en­try as the death toll from the Ebo­la virus dis­ease (EVD) con­tin­ues to climb in Africa.Health Min­istry Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer (CMO) Dr Clive Tilluck­d­har­ry, in an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian on Tues­day, con­firmed that port health of­fi­cers had been put on alert to look out for sus­pect­ed cas­es of the dead­ly strain of the virus now rav­aging West Africa."There is strin­gent mon­i­tor­ing," he said.

The World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO), on its Web site, re­port­ed that health min­istries in Guinea, Liberia and oth­er af­fect­ed coun­tries had re­port­ed about 200 con­firmed or sus­pect­ed cas­es of the virus. "The vast ma­jor­i­ty of vic­tims are in Guinea, where of­fi­cials have re­port­ed 168 cas­es, in­clud­ing 108 deaths. Liberia re­ports 13 deaths from the dis­ease," the WHO stat­ed.Gam­bian au­thor­i­ties have al­ready or­dered air­lines not to pick up pas­sen­gers from af­fect­ed coun­tries, as fears over the in­fec­tious dis­ease mounts.

Tilluck­d­har­ry said mon­i­tor­ing of all ports was crit­i­cal to pre­vent the trans­mis­sion of the virus here."Cer­tain­ly, at the ports of en­try, sur­veil­lance will be height­ened and with­in the coun­try. We have a sur­veil­lance sys­tem for vi­ral dis­eases, in­clud­ing dengue, malar­ia and chikun­gun­ya," he said.The CMO as­sured that there had been no cas­es of the dead­ly dis­ease in T&T."We have no cas­es at our ports. No re­port­ed cas­es or sus­pect­ed cas­es," he said.

Tilluck­d­har­ry said that nor­mal­ly, be­fore any ves­sel, ei­ther plane or ship, was grant­ed en­try in­to T&T, in­for­ma­tion about its pas­sen­gers and crew was first gath­ered."If there are any ill pas­sen­gers on board the port health of­fi­cers will board and do the nec­es­sary in­ves­ti­ga­tions," he said.

He said Ebo­la was a he­m­or­rhag­ic dis­ease that caused mas­sive bleed­ing which led to shock and death. Tilluck­d­har­ry said this par­tic­u­lar strain of Ebo­la was "high­ly pro­gres­sive" and ac­cord­ing to the WHO death oc­curred in 90 per cent of pa­tients.Pas­sen­ger screen­ingT&T Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty Di­rec­tor Gen­er­al Ramesh Lutch­me­di­al al­so told the T&T Guardian that height­ened checks were be­ing con­duct­ed at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port to en­sure the in­fec­tious dis­ease did not make its way to T&T.

He said the au­thor­i­ty was very in­volved in the task force, with the Health Min­istry, to deal with the pre­ven­tion of com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases which was co-or­di­nat­ed at the lev­el of In­ter­na­tion­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion Or­gan­i­sa­tion."Any dis­ease that could be trans­mit­ted one per­son to an­oth­er per­son while trav­el­ling, es­pe­cial­ly air­borne dis­eases, we are very ac­tive in mon­i­tor­ing it and we are work­ing with the Min­istry of Health," he said.

He said a sign was post­ed in the im­mi­gra­tion area ask­ing pas­sen­gers who may have vis­it­ed Africa to present them­selves to of­fi­cials for in­ter­views.Lutch­me­di­al said the pas­sen­gers would be in­ter­viewed and then a pre­lim­i­nary screen­ing would be con­duct­ed."If they (port health of­fi­cers) see the need for sec­ondary screen­ing they would do it," Lutch­me­di­al said.

What is Ebo­la?

The World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) says the Ebo­la virus dis­ease (EVD), for­mer­ly known as Ebo­la haem­or­rhag­ic fever, is a se­vere, of­ten fa­tal ill­ness in hu­mans and out­breaks have a case fa­tal­i­ty rate of up to 90 per cent.The cur­rent out­break, the WHO said, be­gan in a forest­ed south­east­ern re­gion of Guinea in Feb­ru­ary. Since then, health of­fi­cials have re­port­ed con­firmed or sus­pect­ed cas­es in Liberia, Mali and Sier­ra Leone.

The WHO said the virus is trans­mit­ted to peo­ple from wild an­i­mals and spreads in the hu­man pop­u­la­tion through hu­man-to-hu­man trans­mis­sion with out­breaks pri­mar­i­ly oc­cur­ring in re­mote vil­lages in Cen­tral and West Africa, near trop­i­cal rain­forests.Fruit bats of the Pteropo­di­dae fam­i­ly are con­sid­ered to be the nat­ur­al host of the Ebo­la virus. Se­vere­ly ill pa­tients re­quire in­ten­sive sup­port­ive care. No li­censed spe­cif­ic treat­ment or vac­cine is avail­able for use in peo­ple or an­i­mals.