(Trinidad Express) Trinidad and Tobago has the capacity to deal with an Ebola outbreak.
This was the assurance given by Chief Medical Officer Dr Colin Furlonge during a media briefing on the deadly virus by the National Operations Centre (NOC) at its headquarters at Knowsley in Port of Spain yesterday.
Furlonge said while the country does not have a bio-containment unit, the Ministry of Health is procuring one which should arrive within a month.
He said if a citizen is diagnosed with the virus the ministry would use an isolation room at one of the country’s hospitals to contain its spread.
“We have the capacity to deal with an outbreak but don’t have a bio-containment unit to provide an extra level of health care and protocols. We don’t have those things as yet but we’re in the process of rapidly acquiring them.”
Dr Furlonge said: “The main idea is to restrict travel and to ensure the risk is being reduced by doing proper checks.”
He said they are ensuring proper checks are done not only on people from West Africa but from everywhere else.
“Another thing we have to look at is that there’s an epidemic outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is a Central African state that has reported 70 cases of Ebola and 40 deaths.”
With regard to screening, Furlonge said it was constantly being reviewed and while they will never be absolutely and truly satisfied, they are looking at it, monitoring it and evaluating it.
“It’s always something that you will look at time and time again,” he said.
National Operations Centre director Garvin Heerah said his agency had no information with regard to a statement made on Tuesday by United States General John Kelly that he witnessed five Liberian nationals enter Nicaragua claiming to be heading to Trinidad en route to the US through illegal means.
“The Minister of National Security instructed that an investigation be done but we cannot confirm or deny the veracity of the statement.”
Charmaine Gandhi-Andrews, acting Chief Immigration Officer, who also spoke at the briefing, said her organisation had no record of Liberian nationals passing through T&T legally within the last few months.
“Immigration has no evidence of these people entering Trinidad and Tobago.”