File Photo: Mumbai Airport (Press Trust of India)
The government today held a high-level meeting, via video conferencing, to assess the country's preparedness to tackle Ebola, with cases of people being infected by the dangerous virus being reported in more countries.
The government has said it is monitoring people coming in from those countries and that control rooms will be set up at the Ministry of Health.
The Cabinet Secretary spoke to Chief Secretaries of all states via video conferencing, discussing various layers of surveillance facilities to be set up, including at airports, in the meeting today.
There is concern in the US after it became known that a second healthcare worker infected with Ebola had boarded a domestic flight a day before she was diagnosed. US health officials have warned that more cases are possible in that country coming days.
She is one of two healthcare workers infected while caring for a Liberian patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, who died recently.
The World Health Organisation has said that the Ebola outbreak is worsening in three West Africa countries - Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone - where the disease is concentrated; it has reported the total number of cases as nearing 9,000.
The health agency said that 4,493 people have died of confirmed, suspected or probable cases of Ebola, almost all in West Africa.