Govt imposes travel ban on SARS patients
Govt imposes travel ban on SARS patients
Moch. N. Kurniawan, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The government decided on Tuesday to impose a travel ban on
suspected Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) cases in an
attempt to control the spread of the disease, which has claimed
more than 200 hundred lives worldwide.
Under the ban, all those suspected of being infected with SARS
will be obliged to receive medical treatment at the government's
expense and spend 14 days in home quarantine or post-hospital
treatment.
The director general for communicable diseases at the Ministry
of Health, Umar Fahmi Achmadi, said his office had delivered the
list of suspected SARS cases to the Immigration Office to prevent
them from traveling abroad.
"This measure is necessary to control SARS in Indonesia. The
departure of the Briton who wa suspected of having SARS was the
first and last time this will happen," he said after a meeting
involving the relevant ministries.
The Briton, whose identity has been kept confidential, fled to
Hong Kong recently although the medical team who treated him at
the Suliyanti Saroso Infectious Disease Hospital in Sunter, North
Jakarta, advised him not to do so until he was declared free of
SARS.
The Briton was the only SARS case confirmed here, and placed
Indonesia on the World Health Organization (WHO) list of
countries hit by SARS.
Health workers at the ministry have been closely monitoring
around 100 people in Tangerang who had physical contact with the
Briton.
Umar said that in addition, it would be mandatory for
travelers who entered the country and who were suspected of being
infected with SARS to go directly to the hospital for a medical
checkup and treatment.
Another suspect also escaped from a hospital in Bali, but he
was later declared free of the disease.
The government is worried about the epidemic because at
present there are around 7,000 foreigners from SARS-infected
countries, such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and Canada,
working in Indonesia.
Apart from the Briton, so far no one else has been confirmed
as being infected by SARS.
Meanwhile, Minister of Health Achmad Sujudi said that
President Megawati Soekarnoputri would attend a summit meeting in
Bangkok, Thailand, on April 29 to evaluate the handling of the
SARS crisis in the region.
He also said he would attend a ministerial meeting on SARS in
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, later this week.
Meanwhile, Agence France Presse reported that Southeast Asian
health ministers would gather in Kuala Lumpur on Saturday for a
meeting to discuss ways of combating the SARS virus.
Health Minister Chua Jui Meng said ministers from China, Hong
Kong, South Korea and Japan have also been invited to the
meeting, which would be opened by acting Prime Minister Abdullah
Ahmad Badawi.