KOCHI: In what would have an adverse impact on the tourism flow to India from Europe, a German scientist has told the popular German magazine Spiegel that India is unprotective/ defenceless against Ebola virus with many blue collar workers returning to the country from West Africa.
Dr Gerd Antes, director of German Cochrane Centre at Centre for Medical Biometry and Medical Informatics, University of Freiburg, who attended a science meet in Hyderabad recently, said in an interview to the magazine that there were no strict measures at the Indian airports to check the virus.
He rebutted the claim of Health Minister Harsh Vardhan that the nation was well-prepared with “advanced monitoring and recognition systems” at the airports. Dr Gerd said that before landing in Pune, he had filled in a sheet of questionnaire where there were questions related to diseases and epidemics like Ebola. The questionnaire had a very poor quality print that he could hardly recognise even with the help of his reading glasses. However, a bored up officer collected the questionnaire. It was requested/ demanded to report oneself to the crew if one felt like having symptoms similar or related to Ebola.
This was counterproductive because it amounted to an invitation to hide the existing symptoms, he said. He also said that with blue collar workers returning, densely populated slums in India would offer the virus good conditions to spread.
Dr Antes also said Dubai could turn out to be a kind of super-infection centre. The passengers who transfer/ change at Dubai were not yet checked, and travellers from Europe, America, Asia sit in the transit area mixed up with people from Guinea, Kenya, Nigeria together, without any controls. Then they fly on around the world, Dr Antes noted.
