IS the Philippines ready for Ebola? Health Secretary Enrique T. Ona on Friday assured that the Philippines is prepared with multisectoral response plan for Ebola virus disease (EVD) if it reaches the country’s shores.
Ona made the assurance during the first national EVD summit on October 10 held at the Crown Plaza Hotel in Quezon City with the participants coming from different sectors—the government and private sectors, academe, business and medical communities, international partners, and the civil society.
“Because of these developments, the Philippines needs to take action to prepare and respond to cases of EVD in the event that ebola reaches our shores,” Ona said.
Meanwhile, the Philippine Red Cross Chairman Richard Gordon said one of their volunteers was already sent to West Africa to help control the deadly Ebola disease. He added that in the coming weeks the PRC will be sending one team for one month in West Africa.
After one month the first team, he said, will be quarantined first before they will be sent back to the country before another team could replace them.
The Department of Health (DOH) said that in August this year, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared EVD outbreak in West Africa as a public healh emergency of international concern. From Guinea’s first reported case in March 21, the outbreak spread to neighboring countries like Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Senegal, there are now cases in Spain and the United States.
To date, the DOH has developed interim guidelines for disease surveillance, notification and reporting of suspected EVD cases, clinical management, including laboratory testing of specimens from suspected EVD cases, and infection control.
One of the key elements in these guidelines is the critical role of health facilities in preparing and identifying isolation procedures for suspect EVD cases, case management of probable and confirmed cases, and implementation of infection control from triage to waste management.
Ona said the DOH has preparedness plan, which covers detection and reporting, outbreak management and response, surveillance at points of entry, case management , interagency coordination, planning and resource allocation.
“Right now, in the drafting of the preparedness plan, all stakeholders including the private sector, are being consulted on the roles that they can take on in the event of an EVD outbreak in the Philippines,” Ona stressed while adding that the DOH would be needing “millions of pesos” for the equipment.
Meanwhile , the DOH reported that the Reasearch Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) is the only designated National Referral Center for Emerging and Re-emerging Infectious Diseases and is prepared to respond to suspected cases of EVD in the country. It has the capacity to test EVD in its acute and convalescent stages, using detection methods from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
At present, the RITM has tested 18 samples from suspected EVD casesn all of which tested negative.