- Passengers to be checked for virus on arrival into Heathrow from today
- Gatwick and Eurostar passengers will be screened later this week Â
- Anyone with ebola symptoms to hand over mobile phone numbers
- NHS non-emergency 111 line will also be used to identify possible sufferers
- Experts claim the epidemic is ‘most severe emergency in modern times’
- World Health Organisation said it threatens ‘very survival of societies’
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Up to ten ebola cases could be seen in Britain by Christmas, the Health Secretary warned last night.
Jeremy Hunt told Parliament that the health crisis will get worse before it improves.
As the death toll in West Africa passed 4,000, Mr Hunt announced that screening for ebola will begin at Heathrow airport today.Â
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International airports are already screening passengers for ebola – such as this Moroccan health worker using a thermometer at the arrivals hall of the Mohammed V airport in Casablanca
Moroccan health workers dressed in protective gear check people’s temperature as they arrive in Casablanca
Health workers in Macedonia’s capital Skopje have also begun screening the skin temperature of the passengers with a thermal imaging camera upon their arrival at Alexander the Great airport
He told MPs: ‘In the next week, Public Health England will start screening and monitoring UK-bound air passengers identified by the Border Force coming on to the main routes from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
‘This will allow potential ebola virus carriers arriving in the UK to be identified, tracked and given rapid access to expert health advice should they develop symptoms.’
The World Health Organisation yesterday described the epidemic as the ‘most severe acute health emergency in modern times’ as the number of cases hit 8,400, killing 4,030.
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Screening measures – a questionnaire followed by a possible medical examination and temperature check – will be introduced at Heathrow Terminal 1 today, followed later this week at Gatwick, Eurostar stations and other Heathrow terminals.Â
Mr Hunt said the procedure should pick up 89 per cent of people travelling from the affected region, and it could be extended to Birmingham and Manchester if the risk increases.
Anyone who tests positive for ebola will be transferred to Royal Free Hospital in north London, where British nurse William Pooley, 29, was successfully treated when he contracted the virus in August.
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