An­na-Lisa Paul

Two pub­lic hos­pi­tals have been man­dat­ed to set up the nec­es­sary screen­ing and quar­an­tine units to ac­com­mo­date any­one di­ag­nosed with the Ebo­la virus.Yes­ter­day, sev­er­al stake­hold­er agen­cies formed a part­ner­ship and set up two com­mit­tees to deal head-on with the now glob­al emer­gency.Act­ing Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Clifton de Coteau as­sured the na­tion that sys­tems were in place for the ear­ly de­tec­tion and treat­ment of any­one sus­pect­ed or con­firmed to be af­flict­ed with the virus.

Dur­ing a break from the day-long stake­hold­er meet­ing at the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre, Knowsley Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, De Coteau said it had be­come nec­es­sary to in­form the pub­lic about Gov­ern­ment's ef­forts.Point­ing to the heads of var­i­ous agen­cies along­side him at the ta­ble, De Coteau said:"It has be­come nec­es­sary to syn­chro­nise ef­forts and share in­for­ma­tion so we would not have the pop­u­la­tion in a pan­ic mode be­cause it is too easy to spec­u­late not hav­ing all the in­for­ma­tion."

Al­so par­tic­i­pat­ing in yes­ter­day's meet­ing was per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Carl Fran­cis; chief med­ical of­fi­cer in the Min­istry of Health Dr Col­in Fur­longe; chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment Dr Stephen Ram­roop; Chief of De­fence Staff Ma­jor Gen­er­al Ken­rick Ma­haraj; di­rec­tor gen­er­al of Civ­il Avi­a­tion Ramesh Lutch­me­di­al and chief im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cer Ger­ry Downes.

Pas­sen­gers en route to T&T dis­play­ing symp­toms of a com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­ease would be met by of­fi­cials and tak­en for fur­ther screen­ing.Tak­ing the lead in this ini­tia­tive is the Min­istry of Health who for­mu­lat­ed the mea­sures that were iden­ti­fied through the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty.

Fur­longe said a 12-bed area has been set up at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex (EWM­SC), Mt Hope, to be used to triage sus­pect­ed cas­es, while two 24-bed wards have al­so been set up at the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal "if it is nec­es­sary at all to quar­an­tine any­one."He said three rooms had al­so been iden­ti­fied at the EWM­SC In­ten­sive Care Unit, which will be ca­pa­ble of pro­vid­ing iso­la­tion and en­sur­ing clin­i­cal care was ad­min­is­tered.

Fur­longe said the close prox­im­i­ty of the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal to EWM­SC en­sured easy ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty by any­one need­ing ur­gent med­ical care.These mea­sures were de­cid­ed up­on fol­low­ing meet­ings with re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties, the na­tion­al sur­veil­lance unit, coun­ty med­ical of­fi­cers of health re­spon­si­ble for the port ar­eas lo­cat­ed in the St George West, St George East and Ca­roni dis­tricts.

Promis­ing a pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion blitz cam­paign in the days ahead, Fur­longe said the min­istry would be us­ing news­pa­per, ra­dio and tele­vi­sion ad­ver­tise­ments to guide the pub­lic about the symp­toms, risk fac­tors, vac­cines and avail­able care.He said: "We recog­nise that Ebo­la is non-spe­cif­ic and may look like any oth­er vi­ral ill­ness. We have in T&T a num­ber of vi­ral and bac­te­r­i­al ill­ness­es which may mim­ic in­fec­tions like Ebo­la. We have to be aware and up­scale what we do in gen­er­al, try our best to al­lay pub­lic fears and pro­vide care."

Fur­longe as­sured the pub­lic the au­thor­i­ties were ready for any sce­nario that may de­vel­op.Mar­itime bor­der sur­veil­lance is al­so ex­pect­ed to be in­creased in a bid to re­duce the num­ber of peo­ple en­ter­ing the coun­try il­le­gal­ly and who would not be screened by the prop­er au­thor­i­ties.As of Au­gust 2, a to­tal of 1,610 cas­es were record­ed glob­al­ly, with 890 deaths in­clud­ing more than 80 health­care work­ers.

Con­firm­ing the deaths had been con­fined to coun­tries on the African con­ti­nent, such as Liberia, Sier­ra Leone and Guinea, De Coteau said with no di­rect flights to this coun­try from places where Ebo­la out­breaks were re­port­ed, "we have been as­sured through the Min­istry of Health that so far, thank God we are safe."Civ­il avi­a­tion head Ramesh Lutch­me­di­al said there were guide­lines to be fol­lowed by flight crews if they sus­pect­ed any­one com­ing to the coun­try who had dis­played symp­toms of the virus.

These in­clude con­tact­ing the air traf­fic con­trol cen­tre who will in­form the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty, which will in turn ac­ti­vate emer­gency mea­sures at the first port of en­try. Lutch­me­di­al said the air­port where the pas­sen­ger em­barked on the flight would al­so be no­ti­fied.Per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Carl Fran­cis, said lo­cal au­thor­i­ties had been in con­tact with in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies as they sought to co-or­di­nate a holis­tic ap­proach to the sit­u­a­tion.

"We are on the ball. We are con­nect­ed in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. We will be con­nect­ed more re­gion­al­ly. We are in the throes of plan­ning and on top of this. We want to con­vey to the pub­lic there is no need to pan­ic," he said.Ad­mit­ting that the prob­lem of il­le­gal en­trants in­to the coun­try was a cause for con­cern, chief im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cer Ger­ry Downes said any­one ar­riv­ing in T&T should be screened by port health work­ers be­fore ap­proach­ing im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers.

He said if any­one re­quired fur­ther test­ing, there was leg­is­la­tion pro­vid­ing for them not be­ing al­lowed to en­ter the coun­try im­me­di­ate­ly.Head of the ODPM, Dr Stephen Ram­roop, said ear­ly warn­ing sys­tems were key in de­tect­ing any­one suf­fer­ing with the virus as he as­sured that mea­sures were in place to fa­cil­i­tate staff train­ing, com­pe­ten­cy de­vel­op­ment, iden­ti­fy­ing gaps in the cur­rent sys­tem and a pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion cam­paign.

High mor­tal­i­ty rate

At a wel­come cer­e­mo­ny for ten Chi­nese med­ical spe­cial­ists yes­ter­day, Health Min­is­ter Fuad Khan said his min­istry was col­lab­o­rat­ing with the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to man­age the pos­si­ble spread of the Ebo­la virus in T&T.The dead­ly virus, which has spread to sev­er­al coun­tries in west Africa and cur­rent­ly has vic­tims in both Eu­rope and the Unit­ed States, has not yet reached the Caribbean."Ebo­la is a se­ri­ous prob­lem. There is a 60 per cent mor­tal­i­ty rate. We have to be very care­ful," Khan said.

He said the ill­ness was haem­or­rhag­ic which meant vic­tims bled to death.Khan said the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry had helped cre­ate a pro­gramme that dealt with bor­der se­cu­ri­ty, and the plan was to con­trol both le­gal and il­le­gal ports of en­try to en­sure the virus did not en­ter the coun­try un­know­ing­ly.