A Filipino engineer who came home to attend the funeral of his mother was placed under quarantine by local health authorities after officials found out that he came from Sierra Leone, one of the countries that was hit by the deadly oubreak of the Ebola virus.
The 35-year-old left Sierra Leone on Jan. 20 and took changed planes in Morocco then Dubai before heading for Hong Kong where he took a flight to Cebu.
Dr. Dino Caing, head of the Regional Epidemiology Surveillance Unit, said the engineer will undergo the mandatory 21-day seclusion. The count started on his arrival Wednesday evening.
Caing said the OFW is not from Central Visayas.
“Absolutely not from Region 7,” he stressed.
Sierra Leone is one of the countries hit by the Ebola virus epidemic along with the neighboring countries of Guinea and Liberia.
“He was a cooperative because he voluntarily divulged the information that he came from Sierra Leone and he knew about the mandatory 21-day quarantine. He has resigned himself to the fact that he cannot return to his place of work because of the deployment ban raised by the DFA (Department of Foreign Affairs),” he said.
The OFW started working in Sierra Leone in 2013.
“Though the four countries he passed through did not place him under mandatory quarantine, he still obeyed the rule in our country to place him under 21 days of mandatory quarantine,” Caing added.
Virus-free
“He’s not complaining because we gave all the amenities to him like cable TV, Wi-Fi, free meals and snacks, free laundry. He can accept visits except from children,” Caing said.
Caing said the quarantined OFW told him that there were many OFWs who chose to stay back in Sierra Leone where they continue to work as salary rates and incentives are better there when compared with what they earn if they bare employed in the Philippines.
“Many of his coworkers didn’t go home because of the mandatory 21-day quarantine and the deployment ban,” Caing said.
Caing said the quarantined OFW’s workplace in Sierra Leone is Ebola virus-free, the reason why the OFW wasn’t quarantined in the airports of the countries he passed.
Last December, there were three OFWs who underwent mandatory quarantine since they came from countries that were affected by the Ebola outbreak.
The three OFWs were a mining supervisor and two accountants.
All three were working in Sierra Leone, West Africa and had decided to come home to spend Christmas with their families.
The three were declared Ebola-free by doctors after 21 days and they showed no symptoms of the virus.
The government of Sierra Leone eased restrictions on movement and commercial activity last Friday even as the president warned that the fight against the deadly disease is not yet over.
The outbreak has afflicted more than 21,000 people, nearly half of them in Sierra Leone.
But the number of new infections is now falling in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, the three most affected countries.
President Ernest Bai Koroma announced in a national broadcast that, starting last Friday, the country would lift all district quarantines and extend business hours on Saturdays.
Koroma said that while people must remain vigilant, easing the restrictions would jump-start the economic recovery.
The Ebola outbreak hammered the economies of the three most affected West African nations, including cutting people off from their farms, shutting down markets and slowing the movement of goods.
Sierra Leone plans to reopen schools in March, and Koroma also outlined the steps that must be taken before that happens.
This includes disinfecting schools that were used to screen or treat Ebola patients and training teachers in safety and hygiene measures.
The World Health Organization said tracking down every last case in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Libera remains difficult on their part./With an AP report