AUSTRALIAN medical staff who caught Ebola in West Africa would not survive the 30-hour flight home, Health Minister Peter Dutton has declared, defending the government’s refusal to put boots on the ground in the hot zone.
Labor has backed calls for Australia to join the US, UK and France in sending personnel, with deputy Opposition Leader Tanya Plibersek saying today that financial aid was not enough and “we could and should and must do better’’.
Mr Dutton insisted it was too risky for the government to send people when there was no means to evacuate them home and when binding agreements with third party nations such as the US, Germany or the UK were yet to be struck to take any infected with the lethal virus.
“There are no … commercial or military options available to us to evacuate health workers,’’ he said.
Tony Abbott also resisted calls to send people.
“It would be a little irresponsible of an Australian government to order Australian personnel into this very dangerous situation if it didn’t have effective risk mitigation strategies in place,” Mr Abbott told reporters in Melbourne.
“At the moment there is no way of doing that.”
Mr Abbott and Mr Dutton made their remarks as President Obama warned that Ebola could spread globally unless the world responded to the “raging epidemic in West Africa.”
As Mr Obama cancelled a campaign trip to address the outbreak, he vowed “much more aggressive” monitoring of Ebola cases in the US.
Aid groups including the Red Cross and Medecins Sans Frontieres have sent Australian medical staff to West Africa and have private contingencies to medivac them to Europe if necessary.
MSF has told The Australian that there were at least three options in Europe for a French nurse who contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone earlier this month. She was sent to France and recovered.
But Mr Dutton said there were no government to government agreements at this point for Ebola evacuations, and the expert advice was that Australia should not send teams in the absence of “secure’’ arrangements.
But the president of the AMA said today this option should be investigated otherwise it was likely the virus would “spiral out of control.”
“The situation in West Africa is so dire that we can’t really afford to stand by and say it’s too unsafe for us to get involved,” said Associate Professor Brian Owler.
“Unless there’s a global response ... it is going to spiral out of control.”
Professor Owler also said Australian hospitals were stepping up their procedures in advance of a possible Ebola outbreak in Australia.
The Health Minister said screening arrangements at Australian international airports were effective, and to date about 870 passengers from West Africa had been flagged and interviewed on arrival by customs officers. The system covered those who had transited through a hub such as Dubai in the Middle East, he said. Eleven people had been tested for Ebola in Australia, all of whom were negative to the virus.
Mr Dutton said the public needed to understand that Ebola was “very different from the flu’’ and was spread through direct contact with bodily fluids.
He was satisfied with the protocols used by non-government organisation for health workers returning from West Africa, under which they went into voluntary home isolation for the 21-day incubation period of the disease.
In Washington, as he made his most urgent comments on the spread of the disease, Mr Obama also sought to ease growing anxiety and fears over a second nurse being diagnosed with Ebola after treating a patient in a Dallas hospital.
A desperate race is now on to track the passengers who shared a domestic flight with a Amber Joy Vinson, 29, who had been actively engaged in caring for Thomas Eric Duncan in the days before his death on October 8.
Records show she inserted catheters, drew blood, and dealt with Mr Duncan’s body fluids. Kent State University in Ohio, where three of Ms Vinson’s relatives work, confirmed she was the latest patient on Wednesday.
A day before diagnosis, Ms Vinson caught a domestic flight from Cleveland to Dallas, raising fears she may have put other passengers at risk of the disease.
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