Ministry Of Health Issues Ebola Advisory
The Ministry of Health, Seniors and Environment today [Oct 8] confirmed that no cases of Ebola have occurred in Bermuda thus far, and that planning exercises are “ongoing in an effort to coordinate Ebola preparedness and assure the island remains protected.”
The Ministry said, “At this time, there are no general bans on international travel and trade. However, the Ministry advises the public to avoid non-essential travel to locations where an outbreak of Ebola is occurring.
“The current outbreak of the virus disease in Africa affects four countries, Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Democratic Republic of Congo according to the World Health Organization.
“The Ministry has been actively undertaking public health capacity-building and preparedness efforts over the past two months including an Airport facilities assessment and scenario planning with the Surveillance Committee of the Health Ministry, Airport Operations, and Civil Aviation on September 4th, and from September 8th, approximately weekly teleconference planning sessions have been held with the Pan American Health Organization [PAHO].
“The Ministry has also provided training for point of entry personnel at the L.F. Wade International Airport [including Housekeeping, Airport Operations duty officers, Bermuda Police Service and H.M. Customs Bermuda] as well as other agencies. Travel health information and advisories will shortly be provided to arriving passengers in the aviation setting.
“In addition, the Bermuda Hospitals Board has established an Ebola management plan based on guidelines from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] and World Health Organization.”
“In the event of a known case of Ebola, there are isolation resources available in the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit, and there is an outbreak plan that could be scaled up to involve the Urgent Care Centre, if necessary.
“The new Emergency Department also has isolation rooms and all patients presenting to ED or the Urgent Care Centre are now asked about their travel over the last three weeks.”
According to the World Health Organisation [WHO] the “current outbreak in west Africa is the largest and most complex Ebola outbreak since the Ebola virus was first discovered in 1976.” The WHO said that as of 5th October 2014, there have been 8033 case of Ebola reported, with 3879 deaths.
CNN reports that following the death of the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, airports in the U.S will start taking temperatures of air travelers coming from nations being affected by the Ebola outbreak.
The U.S. Center for Disease Control released a 2-page PDF [here], describing what U.S. entry screening is like for arriving travelers from Guinea, Liberia, or Sierra Leone, which includes taking the person’s temperature and observing them for other symptoms of Ebola.
The full statement from the Health Ministry is below:
The Ministry of Health, Seniors and Environment today confirmed that no cases of Ebola have occurred in Bermuda thus far and that planning exercises involving multiple agencies are ongoing in an effort to coordinate Ebola preparedness and assure the island remains protected.
Regular updates on the Ebola situation are posted on the Government website health.gov.bm, and Facebook page. The Ministry remains in close communication with their international and regional public health advisors and, as such, the Ministry can advise that it is following the latest advice from the World Health Organization [WHO], and the Pan American Health Organization [PAHO]. A technical assistance visit by PAHO advisors will be taking place in the coming week.
At this time, there are no general bans on international travel and trade. However, the Ministry advises the public to avoid non-essential travel to locations where an outbreak of Ebola is occurring. The current outbreak of the virus disease in Africa affects four countries, Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Democratic Republic of Congo according to the World Health Organization. In addition, localized cases have occurred in Nigeria and Senegal and most recently in a single healthcare worker in Spain.
The Ministry has been actively undertaking public health capacity-building and preparedness efforts over the past two months including an Airport facilities assessment and scenario planning with the Surveillance Committee of the Health Ministry, Airport Operations, and Civil Aviation on September 4th, and from September 8th, approximately weekly teleconference planning sessions have been held with the Pan American Health Organization [PAHO].
The Ministry has also provided training for point of entry personnel at the L.F. Wade International Airport (including Housekeeping, Airport Operations duty officers, Bermuda Police Service and H.M. Customs Bermuda) as well as other agencies. Travel health information and advisories will shortly be provided to arriving passengers in the aviation setting.
In addition, the Bermuda Hospitals Board has established an Ebola management plan based on guidelines from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] and World Health Organization. A BHB Ebola Preparedness Sub-Committee has been meeting regularly and coordinates with the Department of Health.
In the event of a known case of Ebola, there are isolation resources available in the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit, and there is an outbreak plan that could be scaled up to involve the Urgent Care Centre, if necessary. The new Emergency Department also has isolation rooms and all patients presenting to ED or the Urgent Care Centre are now asked about their travel over the last three weeks.
Other efforts involve contact with the Caribbean Public Health Agency [CARPHA] through teleconferences and regular emails to obtain guidance and preparedness information.
Most recently, Ministry staff met to plan a PAHO Technical Mission visit which will take place in the middle of October. This visit will provide an opportunity for the PAHO technical team to make presentations to physicians and the health care community; undertake training of Department of Health staff in outbreak investigation and training on utilization of Field Information Management Systems.
In the coming months, Bermuda will be hosting large gatherings of international visitors. Collaboration with the relevant event planners and hospitality industry partners is occurring to coordinate the public health support to all large conferences and gatherings.
Finally, and most importantly, the public must be reminded that preventing outbreaks of any serious infectious disease is a complex undertaking and requires the cooperation of each member of the public. All individuals are advised of the following:
- 1- Avoid all non-essential travel to areas currently affected by the Ebola outbreak.
- 2- Avoid traveling when ill.
- 3- Seek medical attention immediately should you take ill following a journey abroad.
- 4- Advise your healthcare professional of your travel history.
And what is going to happen when the mayors from Africa comes here with their delegations for the Mayors Conference and 1 comes infected with Ebola?
What provisions have the CoH made to prevent Ebola from landing on our shores?
Have the CoH made any invitee changes due to Ebola outbreaks in the African nations?
Just been bitten by a black widow,do they transmit ebola?
Do as Nigeria did.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/10/08/ebola-nigeria-lagos-africa/16865421/
so if a fish eats someones dump that has ebola and some body catches that fish and eats it ?do they get ebola? can cattle ,sheep, goats be at risk of transmitting ebola like dogs? the scary part is not knowing .
Hopefully the Health dept. will be more careful than they were with the chicungunya patient a couple weeks ago or how the hospitals in the US released the (now deceased) guy despite his condition and the fact he was coming from Sierra Leone a few days ago.
It might have turned out differently if he had only admitted to handling an Ebola patient himself. The world is dependent on travellers being truthful when answering the pertinent questions.
I ask again. What is being done to ensure that none of the attendees, be they delegates or accompanying associates or family members, of the upcoming Black Mayors Conference coming from the effected regions of West Africa bring Ebola here with them? Surely we can restrict entry to those coming from these regions as a precaution. This is a serious matter and we need to take strong steps to keep our population safe.
Ebololola
Let’s pay the f*** attention to travel history and symptoms please! This is so serious people.
What they need to do is keep adcisi g the public on how the virus spreads! YOU CANNOT JUST CATCH EBOLA!! You have to come in contact with a contaminated persons bodily fluids!!! So unless you touch someone’s Saliva, Blood, Vomit, Semen or Feces YOU CANNOT GET THE VIRUS. Please people KNOW THE FACTS.
… And sweat
Keep researching. Have read a few articles stating that it can be transmitted through moisture in the air. Don’t you ever wonder why people at hospitals, etc. are wearing hazmat suits on the news?
You can ALSO catch Ebola airborne as well well… NOT just by bodily fluids etc… their is a discrepancy in what the medical field and researchers consider airborne to be…. so…yes do your research!!!! Don’t believe everything they tell you initially!! If i find the link to support this i will post because i did read it.
Maybe you should speak with the Spanish nursing assistant who contracted it. She was always in HAZMAT gear and still caught it.
Because, they believe, as she has stated to authorities, she touched her bare face with her gloved hand after exposure.
Where all screwed if this ever got here?/we cannot even control the chicken and cat population , let alone trying to catch this virus coming here…What is EBOLA?
It’s a virus that attacks a person blood system:
Ebola is what scientists call a haemorraghic fever – it operates by making its victims bleed from almost
anywhere on their body.
Usually victims bleed to
death.
Ebola is highly contagious;
Being transmitted via
contact with body fluids
such as blood, sweat, saliva,
semen or other body discharges.
Ebola is however NOT AN AIRBORNE VIRUS!
EXTREMELY deadly:
About 90% of people that
catch Ebola will die from it.
It’s one of the deadliest
diseases in the world,
killing in just a few weeks.
Untreatable(no cure):
Ebola has no known treatment or cure.
Victims are usually treated for symptoms with the faint hope that they
recover.
How Do I Know Someone has Ebola?
•Fever
•Headache
•Diarrhoea
•Vomiting
•Weakness
•Joint & Muscle pains
•Stomach Pain
•Lack of Appetite
Protect Yourself:
•Wash Your Hands
with Soap
Do this a lot. You can
also use a good hand
sanitizer. Avoid
unnecessary physical contact with people.
■Restrict yourself to food you prepared yourself.
■Disinfect Your Surroundings
The virus cannot
survive disinfectants,heat, direct sunlight,detergents and soaps.
Clean up!:
•Fumigate If you have Pests.
•Rodents can be carriers of Ebola.
•Fumigate your environment & dispose off the carcasses properly!
•Dead bodies CAN still
transmit Ebola.
•Don’t touch them without
protective gear or better yet avoid them altogether.
She thinks she touched her face with an infected glove during the decontamination process.
They say it can’t be spread through the air eh? Read this then.
Finally, some also question the official assertion that Ebola cannot be transmitted through the air. In late 1989, virus researcher Charles L. Bailey supervised the government’s response to an outbreak of Ebola among several dozen rhesus monkeys housed for research in Reston, Va., a suburb of Washington.
What Bailey learned from the episode informs his suspicion that the current strain of Ebola afflicting humans might be spread through tiny liquid droplets propelled into the air by coughing or sneezing.
“We know for a fact that the virus occurs in sputum and no one has ever done a study [disproving that] coughing or sneezing is a viable means of transmitting,” he said. Unqualified assurances that Ebola is not spread through the air, Bailey said, are “misleading.”
Peters, whose CDC team studied cases from 27 households that emerged during a 1995 Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo, said that while most could be attributed to contact with infected late-stage patients or their bodily fluids, “some” infections may have occurred via “aerosol transmission.”
Skinner of the CDC, who cited the Peters-led study as the most extensive of Ebola’s transmissibility, said that while the evidence “is really overwhelming” that people are most at risk when they touch either those who are sick or such a person’s vomit, blood or diarrhea, “we can never say never” about spread through close-range coughing or sneezing.
“I’m not going to sit here and say that if a person who is highly viremic … were to sneeze or cough right in the face of somebody who wasn’t protected, that we wouldn’t have a transmission,” Skinner said.
Peters, Russell and Bailey, who in 1989 was deputy commander for research of the Army’s Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, in Frederick, Md., said the primates in Reston had appeared to spread Ebola to other monkeys through their breath.
The Ebola strain found in the monkeys did not infect their human handlers. Bailey, who now directs a biocontainment lab at George Mason University in Virginia, said he was seeking to research the genetic differences between the Ebola found in the Reston monkeys and the strain currently circulating in West Africa.
Though he acknowledged that the means of disease transmission among the animals would not guarantee the same result among humans, Bailey said the outcome may hold lessons for the present Ebola epidemic.
“Those monkeys were dying in a pattern that was certainly suggestive of coughing and sneezing — some sort of aerosol movement,” Bailey said. “They were dying and spreading it so quickly from cage to cage. We finally came to the conclusion that the best action was to euthanize them all.”
Good to see BERMUDA is making the right preparations IF Ebola should ever be brought here. GOOD TO KNOW…..
TRAVEL will be severely impacted globally IF the outbreak explodes in Africa…..
you all don’t have a clue whats about to happen here and globally…will post relevant facts later…gotta run now.
heres a quick overview…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zb41sCOqPw
While everyone was pouring cold water on themselves and nominating others to take the challenge(good cause by the way),we should have had our attention on this virus from jump. Now that’s it close to home everyone is fearful and pay attention. Really? So now that they’re trying to create a vaccine for it,can anybody come up with something fun to raise money to vaccinate those that are less fortunate? Any ideas?
The government better be ready for the possibility of ebola coming here. Our island is way too small to tackle such a big outbreak.
While I feel sorry for the guy that died in the US, and the all the pepole in west Africa, why is it that 20,000 pepole died in the US at the begining of the Aids epidemic before president Regan even mentioned it… and pepole still dont wear condoms… let alone a mask for Ebola…
We should ban travel here by anyone who has been in an infected region in the past 6 months.
Eventually, many countries will do this type of thing, but they are too politically correct to do it now. They have to wait for a disaster before they act. We, on the other hand, have nothing to lose if we act now, and a lot to lose if we don’t.