‘No Filipino will die of Ebola’

Manila: No Philippine national will die of Ebola, officials have declared, saying the country has created an inter-agency task force to ensure it is “over-prepared” in handling an outbreak of the deadly virus.

“President Benigno Aquino signed an executive order that called for the creation of an inter-agency task force to manage new and emerging infectious diseases in the Philippines,” Interior and Local Government Secretary Mar Roxas said.

“He has also ordered the departments of health, interior and local government, and the Philippine National Police, and other concerned agencies to coordinate with each other to monitor an Ebola outbreak in the Philippines,” Roxas said, adding, “Our contingency plan is a holistic approach in dealing with Ebola.”

“We are preparing hard because the Philippines has 12 million overseas Filipino workers, some of whom are based in risky areas,” Roxas said.

He said some 1,700 Filipinos are deployed in West Africa, where the Ebola virus has killed majority of the more than 4,500 fatalities.

Noting that additional preparations were put in place in the Philippines in less than two months to fight the Ebola virus, Health Secretary Enrique Ona said: “Major government hospitals and institutes such as the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine in Metro Manila’s suburban Muntinlupa, the San Lazaro Hospital in Manila, and the Lung Centre of the Philippines in suburban Quezon City have been designated as treatment centres with special isolation rooms for Ebola patients.”

“About 20 other government hospitals located nationwide, in Luzon, central Philippines, and the southern Philippines have been retrofitted with isolation rooms for Ebola patients,” Ona said, adding that 50 private hospitals were also urged to prepare handling Ebola patients.”

At the same time, thousands of Filipino health workers are undergoing a three-day training programme on handling Ebola cases, under the sponsorship of the World Health Organisation from October 28 to 30, Ona said.

Filipino health workers from government and private hospitals were trained on how to wear protective masks, control infection, trace contacts of Ebola-hit patients, and proper patient handling, said Ona, adding they have been receiving training from experts from WHO, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Medecins Sans Frontieres, and United States Johns Hopkins University.

“We have developed a strategy on how to handle the 21-day incubation period of the Ebola virus — we are properly equipped to monitor carriers of the virus,” Ona said, adding, “I think the Philippines is no longer challenged by Ebola.”

“We are doing everything we can so that no Filipino will die of Ebola,” vowed Health Department spokesman Lyndon Lee Suy.

Assessing the achievement of the Philippines in preparing for Ebola virus ahead of its arrival in the country, Julie Hall, WHO country representative, said it is “on the right track”.

She referred to the country’s achievement in the past in handling Avian flu, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars), Middle East Respiratory Corona Virus (Mers-CoV).

Sars and Avian flu hit Asia from 1999 to 2005. Some 800 people died of Sars in Hong Kong, China and other parts of the world in 2003.

The United Nations has called for a worldwide preparedness to contain the Ebola virus which has killed more than 4,500 this year, mostly in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.