BASSETERRE, St. Kitts, Feb. 02.2018 – HEALTH officials are keeping a close eye on flights from Europe, as that location is said to be the epicenter of the latest measles outbreak.
Just recently, the Office of the Chief Medical Officer issued a statement confirming that Health Officials in Antigua and Barbuda found an imported case of the deadly disease.
CMO, Dr. Hazel Laws speaking with SKNVibes News yesterday said that they are monitoring flights that are coming in from the United Kingdom.
She stated that within two hours of finding the case, Antiguan officials called their counterparts in the Federation to inform them of the discovery.
After being informed, the CMO explained that they hit the ground running to locate all passengers who came on the BA flight with the imported case of measles.
“The British Airways flight didn’t end in Antigua, it came onto St. Kitts. And so, we got a handle on the passengers who disembarked; our team got a hold of them just to ensure that they are okay, and they didn’t contract the disease.”
SKNVibes News has learnt that there have been outbreaks of the disease as early as 2016, in countries such as Romania and Greece.
Since the discovery in Antigua, Health Officials have implemented strict screening measures for all flights coming in from Europe, via British Airways.
Against that backdrop, she pointed out that the measure was implemented on January 20.
According to information published by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, since the 2016 outbreak, 49 deaths have been confirmed with over 10,000 infected.
Providing statistics, the ECDPC stated that since cases were reported from January 1, 2017, Romania has the highest number with 8,274; Italy, 4,885; Germany, 919.
Other countries with outbreaks include the United Kingdom, France and Sweden.
