The State Health Department has taken all precautions and measures as per the safety guidelines issued by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare to meet the possible threat of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) to the State through travellers from West African nations, Health Minister V. S. Sivakumar said after holding a high-level meeting with senior health officials and medical college authorities here on Monday.
Accordingly, travellers coming to the State from the EVD-affected West African nations of Liberia, Ghana, Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria will have to go through stringent emigration checks and physical examination at the medical help desks set up at airports, he said.
He said the services of medical officers and paramedical staff have been made available at the Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi and Kozhikode airports.
Nodal officerAmar Fettle, a senior physician at the Health Services, has been appointed as the nodal officer to coordinate the State’s measures with the Union Ministry and the Airports Authority of India.
Facilities for treating those suspected to be carrying the virus have been arranged at the medical colleges and general hospitals (GH) in Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode and the GH in Ernakulam. Steps are being taken to give special training to the medical teams here in handling patients as well as on infection control protocols. Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) kits will be made available to all hospitals.
All advisories issued by the Ministry and WHO on EVD and the protocols for isolation of patients and the infection-control measures to be followed have been handed over to all district medical officers. The serum samples of EVD suspect cases will be sent to the National Institute of Virology, Pune. District Medical Officers have been directed to be in close contact with the airport authorities so that any suspect cases can be tracked and followed up.
Health Secretary K. Ellangovan; Director of the National Health Mission Minhaj Alam; Director of Medical Education V. Geetha; representative of AAI B. Krishnakumar; NoRKA CEO P. Sudeep, senior health officials, among others, participated in the meeting.
