DOH stands pat on 21day Ebola quarantine

MANILA — Citing the recommendation of six Filipino physicians who were sent to West Africa's Ebola ground zero, the Department of Health said yesterday that the prescribed 21-day quarantine period for the sickness stays.

Furthermore, the doctors also recommended that the deployment ban for workers to that area be sustained.

Department of Health Acting Secretary Janette Garin said the 21day quarantine period for people coming from Ebola-affected countries would not be changed, per recommendations of the six Filipino doctors who were sent to assess the situation in West Africa.

In a press conference, Garin said that the DOH will not be recommending the lifting of the deployment ban for overseas Filipino workers to Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.

The doctors, all infectious disease experts from DOH's San Lazaro Hospital, were part of the rapid response team dispatched by the Department of Foreign Affairs in Dec. 6, 2014 to evaluate the situation in West Africa. They are Alberto Ponce Belarmino II; Romulo Villamor Jr.; Emerson Malala; Rhona Marie Fulgar; Antonio Villanueva and Hamilcar Morta.

Garin assured that, although the doctors were not exposed to Ebola patients during their stint in West Africa, they also underwent the 21-day quarantine period which ended on February 3.

"We thank the six doctors for sacrificing their Christmas and New Year. DOH sent them to West Africa, and they came back to give valuable inputs and important insights, which led our government to learn crucial lessons on the best actions to take to ensure the Ebola virus disease will not affect our countrymen," she said.

The doctors were tapped to assess the situation in the three countries and to interview overseas Filipino workers who opted to remain there despite the deployment ban and the repatriation efforts of the Philippine government.

According to Dr. Villanueva, they were not directly involved in handling Ebola cases, but were able to visit a treatment facility "that did not have patients yet, because we wanted to learn the protocol. That is something that we can share here in the event that cases arise."

"Almost all, 95 to 100 percent of hospitals, are closed because they don't want to risk the admission of an Ebola patient. Therefore what happened was that there was a rise of ETU (Ebola treatment units)," he said. These ETUs, however, are exclusively handling Ebola patients.