Vietnam tightens Ebola intrusion prevention

HANOI - Vietnam is intensifying surveillance at border gates to timely spot passengers with Ebola symptoms amid recent outbreaks of the disease in some African countries, the Preventive Health Department said on Thursday.

In mid-summer, when more and more Vietnamese students study abroad and foreign visitors are coming to Vietnam for vacations, local quarantine teams at border gates have to work around the clock to detect suspected cases of Ebola infections, isolate and send them to hospitals for further checkups and treatment.

All passengers are supposed to undergo temperature checks using visual infrared thermometers, and those from Ebola-stricken regions have to make additional medical declarations.

From April 4 to June 18, a cumulative total of 60 Ebola cases, including 28 deaths, were reported in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday. The total includes 38 confirmed, 14 probable and eight suspected cases.

At the global level, the risk currently remains low, the WHO said on Wednesday.