CLARK FREEPORT- The Clark International Airport Corporation (CIAC) here announced yesterday it now has head-to-toe protective suits for health personnel and an isolation room for any passenger who could be possible carriers of the deadly Ebola virus.
“We don’t have direct flights from Western African countries hit by Ebola, but we are now prepared for any eventuality,” said newly installed CIAC President-CEO Emigdio Tanjuatco III. He said the suits and isolation room were prepared with the assistance of the Department of Health and the Bureau of Quarantine.
“We are implementing strict monitoring of passengers,” Tanjuatco said. All arriving passengers undergo monitoring for any sign of fever. Tanjuatco said the CIAC emergency services and operations departments were tasked to closely coordinate with health and quarantine personnel here in anti-Ebola measures.
Reynaldo Catacutan, CIAC vice-president for the airport operations, said all measures have been prepared should any suspected case of Ebola be detected. “A suspected person would be led to the isolation room in the aviation area far from other passengers. Then the Jose B. Lingad Memorial Hospital in San Fernando would be alerted for the transport of the passenger to that hospital,” he said.
The Jose B. Lingad hospital is the government’s regional hospital for Central Luzon and was designated by the DOH as treatment facility for suspected Ebola cases. The global number of cases in the Ebola outbreak has exceeded 10,000, with 4,922 deaths, according to the latest estimates by the World Health Organisation (WHO) released on Saturday.
Three countries with shared borders– Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea – account for all but 10 of the fatalities, with only 27 cases occurring outside the west African epicentre. WHO said the number of cases was now 10,141 but that the true figure was much higher, as many families were keeping relatives at home rather than taking them to treatment centres and are burying their dead without official clearance. It said many of the centres were overcrowded.
