Call for Ebola screening at airports
Passengers arriving in the UK from West Africa should be screened at airports to try to prevent the deadly Ebola virus spreading to Britain, said a senior MP.
Keith Vaz called for immediate screening to be introduced following news that passengers from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea arriving in the US will be subjected to body temperature tests and detailed questioning.
"What we need to ensure is that the public feel there is confidence at our borders and that means, we need to put in screening at our borders in order to give the public that confidence," he said.
Announcing the new measures in the US Secretary of State John Kerry warned there was ‘no time to waste’.
The first Ebola patient diagnosed in the United States, Thomas Eric Duncan, died in a Texas hospital this week. Fifty people who he came into contact with are currently being monitored.
In Spain, the first patient to contract the disease within Europe is being treated in hospital. The nurse had helped care for a priest flown from West Africa to Madrid for treatment.
UK Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt admitted that it was ‘now entirely possible that someone with Ebola will come to the UK’.
However, Public Health England has not changed guidance to UK airports, where immigration staff are advised to take action only if passengers are showing visible signs of the disease.
Posters will be placed in airports with information for passengers on symptoms of Ebola and instructions to call a doctor if they become ill within three weeks of arriving in the UK.
Ebola has killed more than 3,400 people in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia and infected more than 7,200.
Linsey McNeill
Editor Linsey McNeill has been writing about travel for more than three decades. Bylines include The Times, Telegraph, Observer, Guardian and Which? plus the South China Morning Post. She also shares insider tips on thetraveljournalist.co.uk
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