Mumbai : The BMC has decided to contact people who have arrived from the West African countries in the past few weeks in order to check for traces of the dreaded disease, informed Mangala Gomare, deputy executive health officer of the BMC. While earlier the BMC had declared it will start screening patients coming from these countries now, the fact that Ebola may manifest within 3 weeks of contracting it has prompted the BMC to monitor those that have arrived from West African countries in the past three weeks.
Ebola virus has surfaced mainly in West African countries of Liberia, Nigeria, Guinea and Sierra Leone and has claimed more than 900 lives so far according to the WHO. This has been the biggest outbreak in the history of the disease. The municipal corporation had on Friday declared a set of measures they will be undertaking for tackling the disease. These include screening of patients at the airport, transporting patients with primary symptoms to Jogeshwari Trauma Care Centre and later to Kasturba Hospital, depending on the seriousness of the infection. However, it did not have a plan for tackling the disease in people who have already arrived in the country. Therefore, the BMC is now planning to gather data from airport officials to single out people who have arrived in the city in the past 3 weeks, contacting them and asking them to get a medical check-up done.
“Well, something is better than nothing,” says Rajesh Subramanian, a health care professional with interests in West Africa. “But my concern is the carriage of this disease through people coming on hopping flights, the ones who were in West Africa last week, then went to another part of the world for eg. Dubai only to come to India later. And how is the BMC planning to do this alone? All the measures against EVD have to be centralised now. It is high time we have a Central agency take up this issue,” he said.
