JOIN USAs Ebola outbreak spreads to the USA and Europe, the Central government is set to conduct a special training session for doctors and health care officials on how to handle such patients, if anybody was found infected in India.
The training session that includes demonstrations and mock drills, is for a group of trainers, who in turn will train people in their respective states. The World Health Organisation will provide the technical inputs. No Ebola case has been reported from India so far.
India’s preparedness was reviewed on Thursday by the Cabinet Secretary Ajit Seth and other top officials.
More than 22,150 passengers have been screened so far of which seven were identified to be at medium risk and 56 at high risk while the others were dubbed at low risk. The categorisation was based on their flight’s origin, rather than disease manifestation. Seth asked technical teams from central institutes to inspect the adequacy of preparations in the hospitals the state governments identified to deal with Ebola cases.
National Institute of Virology at Pune is fully equipped to handle the testing work on Ebola virus and the National Centre for Diseases Control, Delhi, for molecular diagnosis, the Health ministry said in a statement.
Immigration officers have been trained and crew members of flights have been sensitised on the measures to be taken by the airline crew and on the standard operating procedures for passenger screening at the airports by Airport Health Organisations.