Dubai: The UAE health authorities are putting in place strategies for early detection of and dealing with the possible outbreak of any kind of infectious disease, including the Ebola virus.
A special meeting held on Monday by the Central Committee of the Ministry of Health was attended not just by health authorities but police, civic officials, environment officials and private stakeholders in the health sector.
The details of the meeting are yet to be released by the ministry, but a source from the health sector told Gulf News that the health authorities were determined to protect the country from the incidence of any kind of virulent disease and was following guidelines issued by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Meanwhile, Rana Sidani, Senior Communications Officer of WHO regional office in Cairo, told Gulf News that the organisation has sent guidelines to health authorities in the Eastern Mediterranean Region.
“This region includes Egypt, Jordan, UAE, Syria, Turkey and many other countries in the Middle East and also includes Iran and Pakistan, among others. We have urgently asked these countries to focus their attention on early detection of any kind of infectious disease, including the Ebola virus. We have asked them to strengthen their disease detection preparedness and speed of response to the Ebola virus. The WHO is ready to assist all these countries in building their natural capacity to activate the disease control mechanism which could mean controlling the points of entry and other kinds of screening.”
However, Sidani said that so far airport screening instructions were not issued to these countries and may be on the anvil after the emergency meeting of WHO officials and Ebola virus experts to be held in Geneva at the end of this week.
She also added that on July 31, the WHO launched an appeal to collect a sum of $100 million (Dh367 million) to donor countries as an Ebola response plan.
In the last six months 729 people of 1,329 affected by Ebola have died of the disease in the West African countries of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, with many other countries of that region, including Nigeria, under the threat of an outbreak.
“Clinical doctors and nurses, epidemiologists and logisticians are urgently needed in large numbers and this sum that we are raising from other donor countries will be used to create this workforce to combat the disease,” Sidani said.