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Ebola prevention in the reception network

30/10/2014
Fedasil and the Immigration Office are monitoring the health of asylum seekers from regions affected by the Ebola virus. 

Ebola is currently raging in Western Africa and the province of Equateur in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Precautionary measures are being set up at different levels, such as screening at airports before departure and also during flights.Given that people from countries affected by the epidemic sometimes submit an asylum application in Belgium, Fedasil, in collaboration with the Immigration Office and the Ministry of Public Health, has set up additional precautionary measures for people arriving from a region ‘at risk’.Currently, the additional precautionary measures concern asylum seekers from Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, and Congo (Equateur), who have been in Belgium for less than three weeks.The action plan for these asylum seekers provides for:1. additional screening (detection of fever) for new asylum seekers from regions at risk as soon as they arrive at the Immigration Office. Fever is understood as being a body temperature of above 38.5°. 2. the monitoring of asylum seekers ‘at risk’ in reception centres. Since the incubation period (period between contamination and the first symptoms) for the Ebola virus is between 2 and 21 days, the body temperature of those asylum seekers is taken twice a day, under the supervision of the centre’s medical service, during the 21 days following the submission of the asylum application. The disease’s development is excluded after this period.Asylum seekers with a body temperature exceeding 38.5° are sent immediately to a hospital in consultation with the Chief Medical Inspector. This control does not mean that they have contracted the Ebola virus. On the contrary, the diagnosis will very probably exclude the presence of the virus because the initial symptoms of the disease are very ordinary (mainly fever) and the level of precaution is high.More news on Ebola prevention in Europe: http://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/Pages/home.aspx