Ebola alert, hospitals stand by as planes with Indians from Liberia land in Mumbai

[B2G]

Source: World News Report

As many as 112 Indian nationals suspected to have been exposed to the Ebola virus are expected to land in Mumbai from Liberia on seven different flights Tuesday. Civic authorities, meanwhile, are busy creating an isolation facility in a suburban hospital.

According to a spokesperson for the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport (CSIA), the seven flights are carrying Indians evacuated from Liberia by the Indian embassy. Liberia is one of the four countries in West Africa affected by the Ebola virus.

While three flights will be diverted via Delhi, the remaining four will reach Mumbai directly at different times on Tuesday. All the flights are originating from Johannesburg.

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is preparing 120 beds after it received an alert from the CSIA. According to acting executive health officer (EHO) at BMC, Dr Shreedhar Kubal, an action plan has been drawn up. “We are isolating 120 beds. We have been told that more than 100 passengers are suspected to have been exposed to Ebola,” Kubal said.



Read more: http://world.einnews.com/article/220311080/OlE9AXyhb8h-1_ij

[mopinko]

1. oy. going through mumbai?

i know they have good medical treatment in mumbai. it's a big medical tourist place.
but man, what a place for it to get loose.

[heaven05]

2. Is it spreading?

something is amiss.

[B2G]

3. It's spreading still in W. Africa

These are Indian workers who have been in Liberia and are returning to their country. The article states that some of them have been exposed to the virus.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'something is amiss'.

[Moostache]

4. Are you kidding me???

Why in the hell would you possibly take people exposed to a lethal, highly contagious virus and transport them to one of the most densely populated spots on Earth?!?!?!?! Mumbai is also not exactly world renowned for its internal cleanliness and sanitation either...

This is one of the most colossally stupid decisions in world history...if you could go back in history and stop the ships that carried the Bubonic plague infested rats from Asia to Europe, would you instead go get MORE rats and send then directly to Paris, Rome and London of the era?

A killer virus running amok in Africa is bad, that same virus running amok through southeast Asia with the density of the human population there is a pandemic.

[B2G]

5. Agreed.

Their 'precautions' don't give me a warm fuzzy feeling.


"The medical team at CSIA has planned a five-step process for the safety of passengers, including parking the aircraft at an isolated bay. “The passengers will be screened at the step ladder itself. Those without symptoms will be cleared,” said an airport spokesperson.

All suspected cases will be admitted to Hindu Hriday Samrat Jogeshwari trauma care hospital, where the provision for 120 beds has been made. Deshmukh said that only those patients who require treatment will be shifted to Kasturba hospital, where 160 beds can be utilised for this purpose.

According to a senior doctor in the BMC, only end-stage cases of Ebola virus are infectious. “The asymptomatic cases are not infectious and can be quarantined with other suspected cases in the same ward. Only when we are sure that they are infected, will we isolate them in totality,” the doctor said. Kubal said, “Right now, we are focusing on creating beds for suspected cases. Isolation chambers are not immediately possible.”

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. What does "suspected to have been exposed to the Ebola virus" mean here?

That they are known to have been in close contact with confirmed cases in western Africa? (It seems a lot, for nationals of one country) Or just that they've been in the areas with infections?

Update: seems more like the latter:

With Indians fleeing west African nations in the wake of Ebola outbreak, six persons who arrived at Delhi airport today from and around Liberia, were quarantined for tests while 85 others were cleared at Mumbai airport after they were found free of the symptoms.
...
Amid elaborate precautionary arrangements, all 85 Indians who arrived in Mumbai airport from Liberia and Nigeria were cleared by the Airport Health Organisation (APHO).

These passengers arrived in three batches, Mumbai International Airport Limited (MIAL) said in a statement.

The first group of 20 passengers arrived on board South African Airways flight SA 284 at 5 AM from Liberia via Johannesburg and were cleared by the APHO team after screening under supervision of health ministry officials. None of them showed any symptoms of Ebola or had a history of contact with anybody afflicted with the disease, MIAL said.

http://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/indians-return-from-ebola-hit-nations-amid-tight-screening-114082600522_1.html

The 13 Indian nationals, who arrived in Delhi from Liberia on Tuesday, have been cleared after being screened for the Ebola virus, health ministry said.

According to a health ministry statement four out of the 13 passengers belonged to Delhi.

"All were screened for Ebola and found healthy," the health ministry said.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/WHO-alarmed-as-Ebola-affects-medics-13-Indians-from-Liberia-test-negative/articleshow/40928736.cms

[The Stranger]

7. Under what circumstances can someone be legally quarantined?

[Earth_First]

8. At what point...at what point does travel to/from this region become restricted to medical personnel

ONLY?!

Period.

No exceptions.

Good grief...

[True Blue Door]

9. Does the logic strike anyone else as insane?

You respond to an outbreak of a highly virulent infectious disease by evacuating patients from other countries to their homelands, some of which may also not be very well-equipped to handle it?

Doesn't that sound like a perfect recipe for global epidemic? Shouldn't you keep everyone in the countries where they got infected and fly the teams in from other places to handle their nationals?

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. None of these people were patients

All appear to have been allowed to leave the Indian airports after arrival and screening.

All 112 Indian nationals evacuated by the Indian embassy from Liberia, one of the four West African countries affected by the Ebola outbreak, tested negative for the virus after screened for symptoms of the disease with a thermal scanner by the Airport Hospital Organisation (APHO) at the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport (CSIA) on Tuesday.

Another 19 Indians, who landed in the city from Nigeria at 5.41 am, were also screened and cleared by the APHO. These passengers landed in Mumbai in seven aircrafts, all originating from Johannesburg, South Africa. Three of the seven flights were diverted via Delhi, where six passengers, who were isolated as suspected cases, also tested negative for the infectious disease.

http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/mumbai/112-indians-arrive-from-liberia-clear-ebola-test/

[True Blue Door]

11. Ah. But it is the case in general that Ebola patients are being flown out to home countries.

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. Ones that "may also not be very well-equipped to handle it"? Which are they?

2 Americans were flown to the USA; a Spaniard to Spain; a Brit to the UK. I can't see those 4 cases as 'insane'. What specific cases are you thinking of?

[True Blue Door]

14. You don't see it as insane to introduce contagions to other parts of the world

that have not natively experienced them and depend completely on the perfection of your procedures and the staff carrying them out to contain it?

If the word "insane" is too strong, how about just "imprudent"?

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. No, it's not 'insane'. When it's a handful of patients for which the countries are fully prepared

I think it is prudent. Transfer one patient; or transfer a whole team of medics plus people to build a new isolation facility.

[True Blue Door]

16. The lower financial expense overwhelms

the totally unnecessary danger of depending completely on perfect containment technology and perfect execution of procedures by staff to avoid inadvertently spreading the disease to other continents?

[muriel_volestrangler]

17. Far less risk to the health professionals if you bring one patient to them

rather than sending several of them to a country with the epidemic. They also get to live their normal lives in their own country.

[True Blue Door]

18. Yes, but the safety of the doctors is not the highest priority, is it?

The safety of the general public is. And they would probably agree.

[muriel_volestrangler]

19. Which is why the patients are brought back in special equipment (nt)

[True Blue Door]

20. Because a millimeter of plastic is more prudent protection than thousands of miles of ocean.

[muriel_volestrangler]

21. Fuck me, I'm tired of seeing fearmongering on DU

[True Blue Door]

22. I'm tired of people's emotions being used as substitutes for reason.

If you can't find a rational argument for why my arguments are wrong, guess what that means? It means I'm right, and the constructive response is to admit it and move on.

[muriel_volestrangler]

23. 'Reason'? I'll give you fucking reason:

Ebola Doctor Reveals How Infected Americans Were Cured

Last week two American aid workers who had contracted Ebola while working in west Africa were released from a U.S. hospital and pronounced “recovered.” They had been flown to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta from Liberia earlier this month to receive care in the hospital’s specialized infectious disease unit. Kent Brantly, a physician with the humanitarian group Samaritan’s Purse, and missionary Nancy Writebol, of SIM USA, beat the strain of the disease they had contracted, which kills 52 percent of its victims. Bruce Ribner, medical director of the hospital's Infectious Disease Unit, sat down with Scientific American to explain how the two Americans were cared for, the lessons that could be applied to help patients across Africa and why the hysteria over flying the two individuals back to the U.S. was unfounded.
...
Is there anything you would like to add about insights you learned from your Ebola patient care?
The major thing I hope people have appreciated is there was a lot of anxiety, a lot of negative comment about our bringing these two patients back to our facility to care for them. Most of that we attribute to poor education, and I’m hoping that since we were successful in helping them resolve their infections it helps to dispel the idea that this is a disease that by nature has to be fatal. As we have been saying all along, we feel that the high fatality rates in developing parts of the world where this infection occurs are because of the lack of resources. We had always felt that the survival of patients with proper support would be a lot better than in developing countries.

The other thing I would hope we would get across to the public is this is a disease where we don’t have to have a lot of secondary infections—if we follow standard infection-control procedures. We had 26 people giving direct patient care to these patients and we did not have any secondary infections at all, and that’s as we expected.

We were using contact precautions and droplet precautions. Fortunately, we don’t have to go to that level of protection [wearing protective full-body suits like in west Africa]. You wear whatever you need so that the blood and body secretions don’t come into contact with you, depending on the quantity of fluids. We used gowns and gloves and foot coverings of the health care workers in order to prevent contact with the body materials of these individuals. Our approach was what CDC recommends: you wear a mask and goggles or a face shield to prevent that infection. Some of the nurses spending three to four hours in patients’ rooms were more comfortable wearing hoods than masks and face shields, though those would have been adequate. We can manage care with minimal chance for secondary spread. It’s not as though we brought the plague to American shores.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ebola-doctor-reveals-how-infected-americans-were-cured/

You're the one here who is ignoring what medical experts say, and instead is rabitting on about how scared you are that the end of the world is nigh. You couldn't even work out that the people in the OP weren't patients. You don't get to talk about 'rational arguments', or claim that you're right, or pretend you've given a single 'constructive response' in this sorry sub-thread.

[True Blue Door]

24. "How scared you are that the end of the world is nigh."

If you have to make shit up to have an argument, you don't have an argument.

I've asked a series of pretty obvious, logical questions, and instead of exploring them, you reacted like I was attacking your faith.

Why, I have no idea.

That article you cite is helpful. Your own comments are not.

[muriel_volestrangler]

25. You have said:

"a perfect recipe for global epidemic"
"insane"
"totally unnecessary danger of depending completely on perfect containment technology and perfect execution of procedures by staff to avoid inadvertently spreading the disease to other continents"
"a millimeter of plastic is more prudent protection than thousands of miles of ocean" (sarcastically)
Your questions are not 'logical'. They are fearmongering.

[Kip Humphrey]

12. What could go wrong?!!!

[Aerows]

26. Cleared?

"The medical team at CSIA has planned a five-step process for the safety of passengers, including parking the aircraft at an isolated bay. “The passengers will be screened at the step ladder itself. Those without symptoms will be cleared,” said an airport spokesperson."

And what happens next, are they just set free? Good God, all it would take is one person to be asymptomatic, cleared and then start becoming contagious and symptomatic.

I'm not feeling very confident about this.

ETA: Dear heavens...
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/WHO-alarmed-as-Ebola-affects-medics-13-Indians-from-Liberia-test-negative/articleshow/40928736.cms

"Mizoram put on high alert to face Ebola

Meanwhile in India, the Mizoram governemnt on placed the state health services department on high alert for any eventuality of Ebola outbreak in the state.

According to a state government statement released in Aizawl, the state health services department officials met on Tuesday to review the preparedness to face the dreaded disease even as no infection has yet been detected in the country.

Dr Pachuau Lalmalsawma, nodal officer, Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme, told PTI that though passengers coming to India, especially from infected countries, were carefully screened at international airports, there was no screening at the lone Lengpui airport near Aizawl."

Mizoram shares the border with Bangladesh. India has a lot of people, but Bangladesh is more densely populated with a much lower standard of living.