DOHA: The Supreme Council of Health (SCH) has warned Qataris and residents against travel to Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria, all of which have suffered Ebola outbreaks. The recommendation is valid until further notice.
Those who need to travel to these countries should follow strict infection prevention and control measures, the SCH said in a statement yesterday.
Travellers should wash their hands, avoid direct contact with the blood and other body fluids of others, use personal protective equipment, avoid skin-piercing instruments and practise safe hygienic measures.
The SCH again confirmed that there was no suspected or confirmed case of Ebola in Qatar as of yesterday.
The SCH is engaged in local, regional and international contacts as part of preparations to participate in a GCC meeting on Ebola in Riyadh on August 13. The meeting aims to put in place precautionary measures to protect Gulf citizens in the event of an outbreak of Ebola.
In a scheduled expanded meeting tomorrow, officials from the SCH, Hamad Medical Corporation, Primary Health Care Corporation, Qatar Airways, Qatar Petroleum, the Ministry of Interior, and the Army will discuss potential Ebola outbreak scenarios and the appropriate preventive and control measures to be taken.
The department of public health in the SCH has been following reports of Ebola spreading across several countries in West Africa since March 21, 2014. The total number of cases reported to WHO as of August 4 was 1,603, with 887 of the patients dying.
The SCH has started internal meetings and consultations aimed at assessing the risk potential and the appropriate measures required to prevent any suspected case outside Qatar arriving in the country.
It has been agreed to wait for the outcome of the meeting of the Emergency Committee convened by the WHO Director-General regarding the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreak in West Africa. On Friday, the WHO declared the Ebola outbreak in West Africa a public health emergency of international concern.
The world body has recommended that Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Nigeria, where the virus is persistently spreading, should not allow persons with an illness consistent with EVD or those who have had contact with the infected persons to travel outside their territories, while monitoring the suspected cases for at least 21 days. However, it did not recommend a general ban on travel and trade with these affected countries.
In response to the West African epidemic, the SCH has raised its alertness through activation of the National Emergency Plan in collaboration with the competent authorities and partners.
It will hold discussions soon to decide on conducting medical screening of those arriving from these countries, besides intensifying surveillance and tracing contacts of suspected cases via dissemination of the standard case definition among healthcare workers at Hamad Medical Corporation, Primary Health Care Corporation, private sector institutions, Qatar Airways, and health authorities at Hamad International Airport.
It will also discuss raising public awareness on preventive measures against Ebola by utilising the mass media, with the focus on healthcare workers and travellers, who are most vulnerable to infection. Training on standard infection prevention and control measures and proper use of personal protective equipment will also be discussed.
Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) is a severe, often fatal illness in humans with a case fatality rate of 60 to 90 percent. It first appeared in 1976 in two simultaneous outbreaks in Nzara, Sudan, and in Yambuku, Democratic Republic of Congo. The latter was in a village situated near the river Ebola, from which the disease takes its name.
The virus was transmitted first from animals to humans and then from human-to-human through close contact (through broken skin or mucous membranes) with blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected people in addition to indirect contact with environments contaminated with such fluids.
Signs and symptoms of EVD include sudden onset of fever, intense weakness, muscle pain, headache and sore throat. This is followed by vomiting, diarrhoea, rash, impaired kidney and liver functions, and, in some cases, both internal and external bleeding. The incubation period -- the time interval from infection with the virus to onset of symptoms -- is two to 21 days.
It can be diagnosed definitively in a laboratory through complex blood tests in WHO-accredited international referral laboratories that apply maximum biological containment conditions because samples from patients are deemed as an extreme biohazard risk.
No licensed vaccine or specific treatment is yet available. Nevertheless, new drug therapies which have shown promising preliminary results are being evaluated.
Severely ill patients require intensive supportive care. Patients are frequently dehydrated and require oral rehydration with solutions containing electrolytes or intravenous fluids.
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