14 people in Serbia under supervision due to Ebola concerns

BELGRADE - Over the past six days, 14 travellers who arrived from African countries where Ebola outbreaks have occurred were placed under epidemiological surveillance, epidemiologist at the Serbian Public Health Institute Bojana Grgic told Tanjug.

Based on the procedure applied in the Serbian healthcare system, all persons arriving from 'at-risk' areas go through the border sanitary inspection at the airport, where they are issued medical supervision orders, Grgic said on Tuesday.

"14 such orders have been issued since Thursday. They oblige the travellers arriving from countries at risk to contact the epidemiological service at the public health institute in their place of residence within 24 hours,“ Grgic added.

The travellers will be in constant contact with the epidemiologists so that their health can be monitored during the longest incubation period, which for Ebola is 21 days, she explained.

If they should feel symptoms of any kind, they should first contact their epidemiologist, who will then organize their admission to an infectious disease unit, she said.

The employees at such units received on Tuesday specific instructions from the Institute of Public Health regarding the actions to be taken should cases of Ebola be diagnosed.

According to the World Health Organization, 1,848 people had been infected and 1,013 had died in the Ebola outbreak this year.

In the face of the epidemics, national health emergencies were declared in Nigeria, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.