Qld to monitor Ebola health workers in Brisbane

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Health workers returning to Queensland from West Africa will be expected to go into a period of voluntary isolation in Brisbane, Health Minister Lawrence Springborg says.

Mr Springborg said the two recent Ebola scares in the state demonstrated strict measures needed to be enforced to limit the potential spread of the deadly virus.

He told Fairfax radio that returning health workers would be required to stay in quarantine in the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital in the future.

“What we want to do is be able to do is monitor people because if we need to treat and support someone who is positive with Ebola, then the metropolitan hospitals are the best place to do that and the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital is the designated place under our plan,” he said.

“Whilst we have excellent facilities in other places, one challenge we have is the diagnostics and where we get diagnostics done is in Brisbane. It’s the same in other capitals around the world.

“You need to be close to the diagnostics and close to advance treatment.”

Mr Springborg said he had also asked the Federal Government to inform Queensland Health workers the names of people who have disclosed they travelled from West Africa.

“I think the bigger risk for us is making sure that we have a handle on people that have travelled around the world because the infectious stage starts after the incubation period which is up to 21 days,” Mr Springborg said.

“So making sure that from [an] immigration perspective that we really want to know where people have come from.

“What we’ve asked is for the Commonwealth authorities to work with us, so they can inform us of people they know have come into Queensland from West Africa so we can actually follow them up.

“That’s what we’d like to do and it requires their cooperation.”

‘No problem in providing information’

Federal Health Minister Peter Dutton said there was no problem in terms of providing whatever information Queensland required regarding those coming to Queensland from West Africa.

“There is obviously a close working relationship between the chief medical officer and the chief health officers between the states and territories, including Queensland,” Mr Dutton said.

He was responding to calls from Labor for the Government to send in Australian teams to West Africa to help the fight against the Ebola outbreak.

“There is an exchange of information now and I’m very happy to provide whatever they need,” he said.

Two Queensland scares so far

There have already been two Ebola scares in Queensland.

In the first case, a 27-year-old West Australian man, who had been arrested for trespass the Gold Coast, reported feeling unwell when he was being released from custody in early September.

Sick with fever, the man was rushed to the Gold Coast hospital by ambulance officers who wore protective clothing.

The man had been in Congo on business the previous month. His test results eventually returned negative.

Last week Cairns nurse Sue-Ellen Kovack, who had recently spent a month in Sierra Leone where she worked with the Red Cross treating victims of the outbreak, reported a slight rise in her temperature.

She was hospitalised and eventually discharged after two rounds of testing returned negative results.