Modern air travel means that any viral disease is a threat to any country served by an airline. In other words, nowhere is safe from any form of human-to-human transmittable disease. However airlines seem to react in remarkably different ways depending on how a disease or virus can be transmitted. The current Ebola outbreak, the largest ever known with over 3,800 deaths to date began back in Guinea in December 2013 and quickly spread to Lagos and Sierra Leone. That was nine months ago, yet only now has the UK announced a screening procedure for passengers entering the country who have recently been in West Africa.
This is bizarre as Ebola is highly contagious when the disease’s symptoms appear, yet a carrier of the disease can remain infected, but not infectious for up to 21 days while the disease incubates. Already cases of civilians catching Ebola outside Africa are emerging, and one fears this may be the tip of what is hopefully a very small iceberg. Yet why is everyone so slow to react to such a virulent and deadly disease, the current strain appearing to have a 50% mortality rate? In the US five major airports are now screening passengers from West Africa, but more serious problems are arising with airplane cleaning staff now taking action over being provided with a lack of personal protection against the virus. Ebola is spread through contact with blood, sweat or saliva of a victim who has the fully-blown disease – and the most likely area for transmission of this disease is in the aircraft’s toilets.
Nowhere do we hear of specialist cleaning teams working on board aircraft in either the US or the UK, yet both these countries have airports which are major crossroad terminals for international travellers. However go back to 2003 and the aviation world nearly went in to meltdown after a Canadian who was returning from the Far East was diagnosed as having the SARS virus. Yes, SARS is highly contagious and is a disease which is carried in an airborne manner through a cough or sneeze from an infected person. However the death rate for SARS is only around 10% and is usually most dangerous to those whose health is already impaired, or the elderly. In 2003 SARS never turned into the worldwide epidemic everyone feared because measures were taken instantaneously. One wonders how many more victims of Ebola there have to be, especially outside West Africa, before someone wakes up and says we must put the world’s health higher in importance than the finances of airline companies whose executives, in their safely sanitized offices, will make decisions based on commercial as opposed to humanitarian reasoning for as long as they can.
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Tamar Jorssen
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[email protected]
Mailing Address
AviTrader Publications Corp.
Suite 305, South Tower
5811 Cooney Road
Richmond, BC V6X 3M1
Canada