E.U. Urges States to Coordinate Efforts to Cut Risk of Importing Ebola
|
Version 0 of 1. PARIS — The European Union’s top health official has urged member governments to agree swiftly on a coordinated set of measures to limit the risk of importing the Ebola virus into the region. “If we are to contemplate such measures, they will only be truly effective if applied by concerned member states in a coordinated manner,” the European Union’s health commissioner, Tonio Borg, said in a letter to health ministers. The letter also called for the sharing of real-time information about airline and railroad passenger movements within the union. The letter, a copy of which was obtained by the International New York Times, emerged just days after Britain announced plans to screen passengers at selected airports and rail terminals. The United States and Canada announced a similar procedure last week for a handful of major airports considered to be the largest entry points for travelers arriving from the countries hit hardest by the virus: Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. France, too, confirmed this week that President François Hollande had raised the possibility of introducing screening at airports in a telephone conversation with President Obama. Other countries with direct flights to the affected region have so far proposed no additional steps toward screening incoming passengers, citing reservations expressed by the World Health Organization and the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control about the effectiveness of screening passengers on arrival rather than targeting passengers leaving Ebola-affected countries. Until now, the European authorities have been exchanging information informally about the virus as the number of known cases has increased and the disease has crossed international borders. A crisis team — grouping representatives of the European Union’s transportation and health ministries, aviation authorities, airports and airlines — was formed over the summer to enable policy coordination. European health ministers are due to meet on Thursday in Brussels to discuss airport screening and other steps to limit the spread of the virus as the number of suspected and confirmed cases in Europe continues to rise. On Tuesday, a hospital in Leipzig, Germany, confirmed that a 56-year-old man who had contracted Ebola while working with the United Nations in Liberia had died. In Spain, where the first case of Ebola transmission outside Africa surfaced last week, an infected nurse remained in serious but stable condition, Spanish news reports said on Monday. Mr. Borg’s letter, which was also signed by Beatrice Lorenzin, the health minister of Italy, which holds the bloc’s rotating presidency, conceded that views about the effectiveness of airport screening had “diverged considerably.""We should engage more forcefully on this issue at E.U. level,” their letter said. The region’s airports also called on Tuesday for “urgent” policy coordination among European health officials. “Otherwise, we risk ending up with an inefficient patchwork of measures, with negative implications for passengers and airport operations — for an unspecified period of time and with no guarantee of success,” warned Olivier Jankovec, director general of Airports Council International Europe, which represents more than 450 airports in 44 European countries. The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control has stressed that the risk of contracting Ebola in Europe remains low. However, agency officials said last week that they were reviewing their guidelines on screening air travelers in the wake of the death of a man in Dallas who fell ill from Ebola after arriving in the United States from Liberia. Critics say screening of airport passengers on arrival is of limited use, since a person carrying the virus may not necessarily show symptoms on the day they fly. They also note that there are only a limited number of direct flights between the Ebola-affected countries and Europe. Airlines that are still flying between Europe and West Africa have reported that most flights bound for the stricken region have been about half-empty, carrying predominantly international aid workers, for the past several months. Flights into Europe have been slightly fuller, but the overall passenger volumes amount to a few thousand people per week. Moreover, many passengers whose journeys originate in an affected country arrive in Europe after transferring through a third country, further complicating the screening process. “Enhanced” screening of airport passengers arriving from West Africa began Tuesday at London’s Heathrow and Gatwick airports, as well as at Eurostar train terminals linking Britain with France and Belgium. |