国产人人色I色婷婷综合久久中文字幕雪峰I奇米色777欧美一区二区I久热久热aV爽青青在线I国产av喷水I国产伦精品一区二区三区免.费I高潮av在线Iww欧美一级I91天天看I黄a在线91I九一无码中文字幕久久无码色…I丰满国产精品视频二区

US EUROPE AFRICA ASIA 中文
Opinion / Op-Ed Contributors

Airlines need to help curb spread of Ebola

By Kantathi Suphamongkhon (China Daily) Updated: 2014-08-05 08:10

Airlines need to help curb spread of Ebola

Doctors Without Borders have declared the Ebola epidemic "out of control." World Health Organization's director general Dr Margaret Chan, has said that the Ebola outbreak is moving faster than efforts to control it and if it continues on this path, the consequences could be "catastrophic".

The current outbreak of Ebola is different from all previous outbreaks. In the past, Ebola infections happened in isolated rural areas of Central Africa, remote from the rest of the world. Ebola victims were not jet travelers and this deadly disease was only a distant nightmare, never a real threat to the international community.

This time, Ebola has killed more than 800 people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The virus has the petrifying record of killing up to 90 percent of the people that it infects, even though the current outbreak so far has a mortality rate of 60 percent. There is no cure for Ebola. The disease has now reached major urban settings in West Africa. In the past few days, an Ebola victim died in Lagos after having taken an international flight. From Lagos, flights can reach all parts of the world. Even though still seen as highly unlikely, a world Ebola pandemic can no longer be ruled out.

The international community must not be complacent. Some medical experts have urged the general public not to be fearful of Ebola since the disease is not airborne, unlike SARS, the Bird Flu and MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome). This is only a partial picture.

Indeed, Ebola may not be airborne, but the victim's body fluids are highly contagious. This means that a person can catch Ebola even without seeing or touching the victim in person, but merely by touching the same door knobs, water faucets or anything else that an infected person may have touched with unclean hands earlier in public places.

The screening of jet travelers for contagious diseases must be upgraded. There is a lot of work that medical and security experts must accomplish urgently. For this article, I shall highlight one simple thing that airlines around the world can easily do and must do now.

Most airlines may have contributed to the spreading of deadly diseases such as Ebola, SARS, the Bird Flu and MERS, simply by not allowing sick passengers, holding certain types of tickets, to change their flights, without financial penalties. I have known many air passengers, with the flu, being forced to cough their way onto board planes, simply because airlines would not allow them to delay their flights, without financial penalties. This practice has increased the incentive for people with contagious diseases to fly.

From now on, airlines must allow people who are sick to wait and fly when they are well, without any financial penalties, regardless of the types of tickets they may hold. This is a small and simple sacrifice that airlines can do now to save lives.

The author is the 39th minister of foreign affairs of Thailand. This opinion essay was distributed by the US-based Pacific Perspectives Media Center.

Most Viewed Today's Top News
...