OK, this is officially Crazy Sunday in Flublogia. No sooner do we recover from an Ebola scare in the UK than we get this report from CCTV.com English: Phillippines reports possible Ebola cases. Click through for the one-minute video clip.
The Phillipines has reported the country's first suspected cases of the Ebola virus. According to the country's health officials, seven workers who returned to the Phillipines from Sierra Leone are showing symptoms symilar to that of the tropical virus.
There are currently over 1,300 suspected cases worldwide. The World Health Organization says there is little risk of the virus spreading outside of West Africa, but countries outside of the affected region are still taking precautions to prevent a spread.
The outbreak is the biggest since Ebola first emerged in Africa nearly 40 years ago. So far, more than 700 people have died in West Africa.
We know from MERS that the Filipino diaspora can bring home some serious diseases, and the diaspora isn't just in the Gulf states.
ABS-CBN News reported just yesterday that arrivals from West Africa will be monitored for Ebola. Now I learn from Inquirer.net that these seven Filipinos are among 15 migrant workers who returned home in July on order of their employers to avoid contracting Ebola. (Sierra Leone also has 115 Filipino peacekeepers, but they're not the problem.)
So the returned workers are being phoned daily; apparently three had some fever and diarrhea, but later tested negative for Ebola.
And this is just another tempest in a test tube.
