With the latest swine flu outbreak in Mexico and the greater number of sick and dead people having contracted this flu, you have to ask the question why countries do not quarantine when such a major scenario like the one we are witnessing happens.
It seems to me that when the World Health Organization (WHO) upgrades to a “public emergency of international concern”, it should be a cue for all countries to:
- Extract all the citizens of their own country and quarantine them to see if any contracted the virus. Returning citizens from other countries needing to stop to change planes (i.e) should be isolated. All should have a mask to limit possible infection.
- Contact all citizens that have gone to this country in the last 15 days and advise them of the situation and direct them to hospital that can verify if they do have the virus or not. If so, administer whatever medication needed and do a track back of as many people as possible this person have been in contact with.
- Do not allow your citizens to travel to that particular country until the situation is resolved. In other words, ban all flights, bus’, trains, boats to enter the infected country.
- Close your borders temporarily to any citizens of the infected country.
It is certain that this method is not a 100% virus proof but it sure limits possible spread of the virus worldwide. We shut down borders when it comes to possible infected food, why wouldn’t we with people?
Filed under: Environment, Health, Society | Tagged: Health, mexico, quarantine, swine flu, virus
