With Nigeria the latest Ebola country victim, Ghana’s Immigration Service (GIS) has said that it will be a hard and harsh in screening everyone who will cross Ghana’s borders.
Head of Port Service in Takoradi Edward Saka told Joy News, the GIS is “collaborating so much with transport department, the STC and other transit buses so that before they even arrive at the border, they should be able to make observations and people who may be identified to have traces of any sickness, they should quickly alert” us.
Nigeria has been hit with the dreaded virus after Patrick Sawyer, a Liberia and U.S. citizen died of the disease in Lagos last month shortly after arriving at the airport.
The second confirmed case was a doctor who looked after him.
Nigeria’s Health Commissioner Jide Idris also said a further six people who had made contact with Sawyer had been quarantined but were not showing symptoms.
Nigerian health authorities acknowledged Tuesday that they did not immediately quarantine a sick airline passenger who later died of Ebola, announcing that eight health workers who had direct contact with him were now in isolation with symptoms of the disease.
The announcement that Sawyer was not immediately quarantined underscores concerns that West Africa is ill-equipped to contain such a disease.
Taking a cue, Ghana’s Immigration Services “have stepped up our patrol team at various unproved routes to ensure that should people use the place, we should be able to identify them for screening”.
Health Minister Dr. Kwaku Agyemang Mensah is also confident Ghanaians will not see the Ebola virus even though they will hear about it in other countries.
The Country Representative of the World Health Organization Magda Robalo said she is convinced Ghana’s borders are secured.
Ebola, can cause victims to bleed from the eyes and mouths before a grisly death. It has killed 887 people across four countries in West Africa, an impoverished region with severely limited medical resources.
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