PARIS: Travel restrictions could worsen West Africa’s Ebola epidemic, limiting medical and food supplies and keeping out much-needed doctors, virologists said yesterday as the disease continued its deadly spread.
The worst-ever outbreak of the haemorrhagic fever, which has hit Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria and Guinea the hardest, has seen airlines cancel flights and several countries barring people from affected nations.
“If we impose an aerial quarantine on these countries, we undermine their fight against the epidemic: the rotation of foreign medical staff and distribution of supplies, already inadequate, will become even more difficult,” said Sylvain Baize, head of the Pasteur Institute’s viral haemorrhagic fever centre in Lyon, France.
This should be weighed against a “very limited” risk of infection for flight crews, given that the virus can only be passed on once symptoms appear and only through physical contact with the body fluids of someone who is ill, he said.
The World Health Organisation has appealed for the reversal of flight cancellations to West Africa, where Ebola has killed more than half of the 3,000-plus people it has infected.
There is no vaccine or licenced cure. Air France has suspended its service to Freetown, and British Airways its flights to Freetown and Monrovia. Royal Air Morocco is now the only airline providing a regular service to the capitals of Sierra Leone and Liberia, while Brussels Airlines offer an irregular schedule.
South Africa has issued a ban on non-citizens travelling from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, Saudi Arabia has stopped granting visas to workers from these countries, and several West African neighbours closed their land borders with worst-affected states.
AFP
