The global risk from the threat of the Ebola virus increases if it spreads to countries with poor public health systems . It continues to wreak havoc in West Africa and fears are growing that the virus will spread around the world. Now, a new research published in the magazine “The Lancet” , explains that if there are no inspections of travelers at airports, each month three infected with Ebola will continue to fly.
Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone , countries that are now suffering an outbreak of this dreaded disease, are sending passengers with the virus on international flights , specifically three travelers each month , according to the estimate of Kamran Kan of the San Miguel Hospital in Toronto (Canada). main of this study.
According to Kan, putting controls at the airports of origin would be more effective than doing tests on the arrival of these flights to the United States or Europe , areas where temperature controls are already being carried out. These controls, according to the researcher, are unlikely to “have a significant impact on detecting infected travelers” since most travelers will not know they carry the virus (incubation period) and will not have any symptoms.
To calculate this average number of Ebola-infected travelers, the researchers analyzed data from past and future flights to calculate departures by plane from Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia through the end of 2014, and then cross-checked the information on progress on the spread of Ebola. Thus, the conclusion is that the countries most at risk of receiving infected travelers are Senegal and Ghana; outside of Africa they are the UK and France .
“An important unknown is the proportion of infections that are asymptomatic or mildly asymptomatic. If mild infections occur and are infectious, controlling the disease outside of West Africa could become increasingly difficult . However, this assumption is thought to be unlikely, ”Kan muses.
